Ideas for Celebrating EDL- from the TES Website

Ideas for celebrating EDL- from the TES website

1. get in touch with your nearest large FC and the children interview the Fr and Sp footballers in their native languages

2. try and bring in foreign guest speakers into assembly or do a workshop first or last thing - local MP? sports players? local businesses that trade abroad?

3. get the canteen to serve croissants in the morning

4. get staff to greet pupils in European language.

5. put on a Continental breakfast for a Year group

6. poetry reading competition. Each form had prepared a poem with their MFL teacher, practised it and learned it, pupils nominated themselves, the class voted the performers for their form, and then the poem was performed on stage. Judges decided on 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Of course, the poems were very short and easy. The teacher explained the meaning of the poem too, so that it made more sense to them. I think that it took about 2 hours. They really enjoyed it, and motivated them for their MFL lessons even more.

7. European Language 'phrase' search. Teachers have the sheet with all the phrases on, would write one phrase on the board during lessons and which language it was, and the pupils would write it on their answer sheets. These were then submitted, and the pupils with the most answers won a prize.

8. finding 'hello' and 'goodbye' in the EU languages, then getting kids to match them to the right ones (for a prize)

9. film as many non-language teachers as you can at your school just getting them to speak a couple of lines of the Language(s) they could speak & play it at throughout the day in a central place - it went down a treat. It was great to see students’ faces as they watched their maths & science teachers speaking Japanese, French, German.

10. Make a badge for every member of staff so they could write the Languages they can speak on to them

11. do assemblies where Languages & non-languages teachers do a 'sketch' in French & one in German - this was tops also as students remembered this for ages.

12. Make a list of words in the languages you teach then put them on sticky labels, giving each language a colour so the kids know which colour to look at. Give each sticky label to a member of staff. During the day the students have to see how many words they can collect in the language they study and also what they mean eg one teacher will wear a label that has the word voiture in blue and Auto in red, another tête in blue, Kopf in red etc

13. get each teacher to greet the class and say bye in a different language.

14. not a project but only a few activities http://www.mflextra.com/edlmain.htm

15. give each teacher a crib sheet so that they could use it to speak French to the pupils during lessons on that day. At the end of the day the children vote for the teacher they felt had made the most effort, and the winner received a box of chocolates. the crib sheet is on the mflresources2 files page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mflresources2

16. get the canteen to serve food with a European flavour.

17. for French there may be some good ideas on this site: http://www.frenchteachers.org/nfw/Default.htm

18. design signs to go on classroom doors for each subject and get them made.

19. do salsa / cha cha lessons

20.get any student who speaks a second language at home to teach some of the staff.

21. do some bellydancing with the kids

22.sell all types of European cakes and biscuits every break during the week, raising money for charity

23.All assemblies in this week start with international greetings.

24.All office staff greet in a different language.

25.Flamenco workshop

26.Charity lunch provided by parents and students (community language students)

27.What about using the lord's Prayer in lots of different languages for RE? ’The Convent of the Pater Noster was built over the site where Jesus taught His disciples the Lord's Prayer.The walls are decorated with 140 ceramic tiles, each one inscribed with the Lord's Prayer in a different language.' There's a great site http://www.christusrex.org/www1/pater/ that gives photos of the different versions - it's really interesting! You could do 'match the language to the picture'.