My Students' projects about India

Through the Foreign Language Week activities students understand the importance of learning a second language and become aware of the other cultures. They also find an opportunity to express their own culture and compare it with others. They understand that they should respect other cultures, languages, accents or dialects, too.  Moreover, they are inspired with the foreign language week posters which are displayed around.

·         If you want to celebrate this week, you can decide about the week according to the schedule of your own school. You don’t have to do it on a specific time.

·         Inspire all the language teachers to involve them and share the work.

·         Tell the head of department about the activities you are planning. Inform other administrators, too.

·         Create an atmosphere where the students can use foreign languages as much as they can.

·         Let your students enjoy the week.

·         Record (Photos, videos, note taking etc.)  all events during the week. Then use these records to inform other people (especially parents) on your school website, school newsletter or blog.

·         If you are planning to use the photos or videos of your students on a blog prepare a consent and release form for the parents and ask them to sign it.

·         Here are some links you can get an idea about this week:

http://ww2.nps.k12.va.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=22569

http://viewer.zoho.com/api/urlview.do?url=http://www.tfla.info/advocacy/NATIONAL%20FOREIGN%20LANGUAGE%20WEEK%202011.pdf

http://www.lacitycollege.edu/academic/honor/amg/posters.html

A corridor decorated for the Foreign Languages Week

Corridors decorated for the Foreign Languages Week

Have you heard about ‘Foreign Language Week? In our school we celebrate it annually. During this week, we decorate the corridors and classrooms with many different projects of the students.

Each grade has a different project and the students begin to prepare at least 3 or 4 weeks before the Foreign Language Week. There are also fun activities we have during the week. For example: Treasure hunting, bilingual announcements, games, trivia questions, quiz shows, music and film activities, watching films in English, learning basic words (such as hello, thank you, my name is) in other languages and so on.

What I did with my Grade 8 students this year was a kind of cultural activity. Each classroom chose a country and searched what they wanted to learn about it. They searched about the foods, music, dances, history, currency, formal and spoken languages, tourist attractions, sports or traditional clothes of that country.

Next step was deciding about the type of the project. I advised them to bring 3D projects, videos or role play projects instead of a file full of pages containing copy and paste information. Some students made paper puppets for the traditional clothes of the related country, some of them brought recipes, others made boxes full of pictures and other information inside. Then they displayed everything they have prepared and brought in front of their classrooms.

We put flags and spoken and formal languages of the countries (made of A4 paper) on strings and hung them up on the ceiling.