News from Russian

December 20, 2024/in Other lang information /by Presdales School

Russian department letter and song exchange with the Aubakirova school, Almaty

After a lovely visit to the Aubakirova School In Almaty, Kazakhstan in October, Year 7 Russian shared a New Year Song with an English class there and received a performance of a Christmas song from them. Mrs Willett was very proud of our Year 7s for reading the printed cyrillic script so confidently for this point in the course.

If you would like to hear their performance please ask them because it is in their google classroom.

The Kazakh students shared a song accompanied by one student playing the flute.

The Year 10 Russian group (and a couple of extras) sent Christmas cards written in Russian to a similar aged class and were happy to receive New Year cards in return.

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: Reviewed by Lucy White

: Reviewed by Constantina Nichola

News from Russian

July 19, 2024/in Other lang information /by Presdales School

Year 7

The Year 7 Russian class enjoyed a trip to the Russian Cafe of their own design on Monday 15th July. Mrs Willett was very impressed not only with the class’ willingness to try new things, but also their ability to order them in Russian. Well done Year 7!

German Year 9 Spelling Bee Competition 2024

June 20, 2024/in Other lang information /by Presdales School

Special congratulations to Caitlyn Grayson who participated in this year’s Regional Competiton of the German Translation Bee in Peterborough on 5th June 2024. She was amongst the last 77 from 5020 entrants at the beginning of the competition. Well done!

Congratulation to Erin Bellamy, Lily McMenanim, Anna Stichbury, Georgia Whittey, Lizzie Morgans and Sienna Perry who practised hard and took part in the School competition as far as round 3.

Well done to all of our Year 9 German students, who have taken part in the Translation Bee competition this year. The competition is in 4 stages and began back in October 2023. Students had to translate as many sentences as possible in one minute, using a variety of structures and tenses. This was not easy and they showed real resilience and self- reliance to continue learning and practising in their own time.

Stage 1: Class Competition: present tense sentences

Stage 2: School Competition: present, past tense sentences

Stage 3: Eastern Regional Competition: present, past and future sentences

Stage 4: National Competition: present, past, future tenses plus modal auxilliaries

News from Russian

October 6, 2023/in Other lang information /by Presdales School

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.

News from Languages

October 6, 2023/in Other lang information /by Presdales School

News from MFL

July 20, 2023/in Other lang information /by Presdales School

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

News from Russian

May 12, 2023/in Other lang information /by Presdales School

Celebrate Speaking!

For the second year running, a Presdales student has been celebrated at the British Council ‘Celebrate Speaking!’ event.

‘Celebrate speaking!’ is a festival of languages in education and community through speaking and performance. Students were encouraged to prepare and recite a poem in the language they are studying. The committee were impressed with the Russian submission by Nicol Coman in Year 9 entitled ‘Autumn in rowan beads’ and invited her to perform it at the live event on Thursday 4th May. Mrs Willett and Nicol enjoyed a variety of performances in over 15 languages and lots of the students talked about words they enjoy saying in their foreign languages. Nicol presented her work proudly and professionally.

Well done Nicol!

News from French

April 28, 2023/in Other lang information /by Presdales School

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: Reviewed by Lucy White

: Reviewed by Constantina Nichola

‘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

News from Russian …

January 20, 2023/in Other lang information /by Presdales School

On Thursday 12th January, one of our Year 10 Russianists treated the class to a seasonal dish enjoyed in both Russia and Ukraine at New Year. It got mixed reviews from the students but was much appreciated by Mrs Willett. To find out more about салат “Оливье” click here.