Brae High School

As the most northerly high school in the UK, Brae High School pride themselves in participating fully in as many events as they can, and the European Day of Languages is a particular favourite. This year, teachers were restricted to activities within their own class time, but managed to come up with some quite innovative ideas!

The S1 German class divided Germany up into its Bundesländer. Each pupil got a region and had to find interesting facts and figures about their area for a poster – they had to find the flag, the coat of arms and the main city as a prerequisite, plus any other details. Pupils then had to position their posters so that they were roughly in the correct geographical position.  

The S1 French class took part in a European Day of Languages quiz. Many of the questions related to language facts, particularly to the lack of English as a first language throughout the world, thus making the pupils realise the relevance and importance of second and third languages.

The S2 French and German classes were combined, and chose a motivational and inspirational lesson on the importance of learning a modern foreign language. This lesson was conducted with one S2 group in the past, and the uptake of languages in S3 was significantly increased.

One S3 Maths class was doing ratios, and had to increase or decrease recipe quantities to make bigger or smaller batches. In conjunction with the teacher, this was taken a step further by translating the flapjacks recipes into French and German and using the Home Economics room to make them, resulting in a truly cross-curricular lesson!

           
Early in the New Year, the Modern Languages department have agreed a day to work collaboratively with Home Economics on a “breakfast” topic, with a view to learning about breakfast habits in the countries of the languages pupils are studying, as well as elsewhere in the world.