To mark the UN International day of Peace on September 21st our link school in Russia, the International Arctic School, invited us to share a Peace message or poem with them and they shared the following in return.

Recital: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UUVadct8R6GSLY1zgyuzwAxjpPo0SJLX/view?usp=sharing Poem: https://powerpoetry.org/poems/world-peace-19

Year 10 and 11 Russian both videoed performances of different poems on the theme of peace. If you know someone in the class and would like to see the performance, please ask them to share it. Both classes worked really hard on their pronunciation and delivery and Mrs Willett was very proud of them.

The students in Yakutsk were very pleased to receive our peace poems and understood every word so well that they were able to translate the Russian poems back into English for their English teacher.

Spellian

Well done to the 32 students who participated in our language exchange with Spellian. This year we continued our partnership with Liceo Ancina in Italy and began new connections with students IES Severo Ochoa in Spain and Gymnasium Holzkirchen in Germany.

Spellian conversations are done from home, by video conference, using the Spellian online platform. Each conversation lasts around 30 minutes, with half of the time spent speaking in Italian and half in English. The programme provides an excellent opportunity for students to strengthen their listening and speaking skills and boost their confidence in speaking a foreign language in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Many of our students have formed real friendships with their partners and discovered lots of interesting details about life in Italy, Spain and Germany. Video calls with people we don’t know can be intimidating and we are very proud of the resilience shown by the students who took part.

We will be launching Spellian 2023-24 again in September to MFL students in Year 10 upwards and we strongly encourage students to take part (it even counts towards the Skills section for the Duke of Edinburgh Award!).

Mrs Evenden

‘Poisson d’avril’

On the last day of the Spring term, 8SL learnt about ‘Poisson d’avril’ in their French lesson. This is the French equivalent of April Fool’s Day. In France the ‘trick’ is to stick a paper fish on someone’s back without them knowing. Over the years, the ‘fish’ theme has extended to being able to buy fish shaped breads or chocolates for example around this time. As the 1st of April was the start of the Easter holidays, the homework was to trick a member of the family and upload a photo. There seemed to be a larger number of tricked Dads on the whole who were walking around all day with a paper fish stuck to their back! Special mention must go to Lyra, for making fish shaped biscuits and Maisie, for making a chocolate cake with a fish motif. Bravo!

Well done to everyone and remember to keep the tradition going next year!

Mme Davies