Languages Week

The theme for Languages Week was ‘Fête des Talents’, a celebration of skills. In our increasingly globalised world it is more and more important to recognise, embrace and showcase the many cultures and languages of our global community. Languages offer us common ground where we can come together to explore and understand the perspectives of our neighbours. There is so much to explore beyond the Englishspeaking world.

Year 8 took a ‘trip around the world’ with their St Catherine’s passports. Classrooms were transformed into different countries where students explored the cities and embraced different tourist activities in China, France, Japan, Spain and even Ancient Rome. Anna Jahjah, multilingual actor and director visited Year 9 to discuss creative journeys that can be taken with languages.

Students discovered Japanese sumo wrestling, showcased singing talents in the Mundo Vision foreign song contest, visited the junior school language classes, became Roman gladiators, learned Chinese calligraphy and competed with teachers in a World Cup soccer match.

Thank you to the P&F Association for their support.

Ms Candace Robertson Head of Languages

We went to the research centre during Languages Week for Latin, and wrote the school motto on special paper using quills and ink. We made Roman helmets and swords from paper and learned games that were played in ancient times. One game involved throwing coins into a hole to receive points, and another was a memory game with Greek and Roman Gods. It was so much fun and a great experience.

Mackenzie Lee, Year 7

你好！我爱中文! Ni hao! Wo ai zhonhwen! Hello! I love Chinese! The Year 7 Chinese class had a wonderful time learning traditional Chinese calligraphy. Ms Guo expertly led us in the art of calligraphy and showed us how to delicately and carefully paint the characters so they looked like the ones real calligraphers painted. We made bookmarks decorated with our calligraphy skills, and the results were great.

Bethany Ling, Year 7