Primary Festival of Languages 2019
Primary Festival of Languages, Tuesday, June 25th
Rain could not dampen the spirits of 196 energetic primary school pupils from Pendock, Welland, Kempsey, Upton, Twyning, Hanley Swan and Malvern Wells primary schools taking part in Hanley’s annual Primary Festival of Languages.
Each school discovered and explored foreign languages and cultures with sessions run by guests from the University of Worcester, as well as our visiting Chinese teachers and students. This year, the arts and travel dominated! Primary pupils discovered the shapes and colours in Portuguese, Spanish traditional dancing, different flags in Italian and practised tones in Mandarin. We were thrilled to see the pupils engage so enthusiastically with the discovery of new language as well as the art of Japanese calligraphy and we are very grateful to all those who led the sessions for their creativity and passion.
The day also saw Hanley pupils displaying their community spirit and dynamism. Our truly wonderful year 9 Language Leaders had spent the last few months putting together sessions that they taught with great success, from British Sign Language, to ordering food in Korean. They also ran our traditional international café with real professionalism.
At the end of the day we played audience to the wonderful performances by the primary schools given in the foreign language of their choice, from stories told to us in French to songs in Swahili. This was a fitting end to a celebration of diversity and variety in languages.
We are all looking forward to another exciting day (hopefully drier!) in 2020.
Marie Berthold
Teacher of Modern Foreign Languages