Languages Week

Between the 4th and 8th March Ruislip High School held its fourth annual Languages Week.This year was our biggest and most ambitious week thus far! Students across all Key Stages had some lessons with a Languages Week element, such as learning about the evolution of the English language and borrowed words in English; Pig Latin in Computer Science and vocabulary taken from Italian for Music, to name but a few.

On Monday 4th March Year 9 students were fortunate to have an assembly by a multilingual, inspirational speaker called Steve Eadon. He spoke to the students about how he had never been a big fan of learning languages in school but as they were compulsory he stuck with them and carried on studying them at A-level and University. As a result of his language qualifications, these got him some work experience working for Arsenal FC. They trained him as a coach and he was sent around the world representing the team to train teams abroad. This then led to an eleven year career at Arsenal working in Community outreach where he got to go into schools and local communities with Arsenal players and talk to them about the work they do.

Steve’s talk was incredibly inspirational and opened the eyes of students to the many professions available within the football industry and many were not even football related.

Ronnie, 9D: “Before the guest speaker I didn’t want to study Spanish for GCSE but now I do!”

On Monday afternoon, a theatre company came to the school to perform a play completely in Spanish called La Reserva Duplicada (The Double Booking) to 240 students of Spanish from Years 8 and 9. Three of our students were fortunate enough to get cameo roles in the performance.

On Tuesday 5th March 106 Year 9 students attended the Languages Breakfast which started before school and ran into Period 1. The Breakfast was hosted by the fifteen fantastic and newly appointed Year 10 Language Ambassadors who all study a language for GCSE. Students were able to sample a range of French and Spanish breakfast foods. The French breakfast selection included croissants, pains au chocolat, madeleines, crêpes, orange juice and hot chocolate. Churros with chocolate sauce, potato omelette, serrano ham and chorizo as well as toasted bread with tomato were on offer for the Spanish selection. Students got into the spirit of things by dressing up with berets and Spanish hats whilst tucking into their food and listening to Spanish and French music.

A code-breaking exercise was also created for the breakfast, where students had to use their language and number skills to decode the words spread around the hall, unscramble them in order to make a sentence in French or Spanish and then translate it into English. From all the correct entries, four were selected at random and those students won a £10 Amazon voucher each.

Shaan, 9D: “I enjoyed the breakfast because I got to try different foods I’ve never had before."

On Wednesday after school the MFL Department screened Disney's latest movie Elemental in the hall in French with English subtitles. On Thursday 7th March after school the same movie was screened in Spanish with English subtitles. Over 150 students attended the screenings across both days and they were also treated to free popcorn.

On Friday morning the theatre company returned to school to perform a play completely in French called Le Cours d’Art (The Art Lesson) to 270 students of French from Years 7 and 9. One of our Year 7 students was also fortunate enough to get cameo roles in the performance. The play was very well received and funny.

Scarlett, 7B: “I enjoyed the play in French because it was very interactive and funny. Also I volunteered to play a part in it and played alongside the actors.”

Nicole, 9S: “It was an amazing week! If I am to take anything away from my time at RHS, it’ll be this week and the passion for languages that it has lit. Between the breakfasts, plays and movies it truly is a week to be grateful for.”