Ciao from World Languages Week

Term 3 began with a bang with the inaugural World Languages Week, culminating in World Languages Day and the Language Poetry Evening and Showcase on Thursday, 20 July.

The whole school was invited to participate in language and culturally-based Scavenger Hunt all around the school. The language boys were involved in a wide range of activities running in our classes across the week from eating German cake to Chinese dumplings and French croissants to a pétanque competition and Chinese calligraphy and paper cutting. The Latin boys undertook Roman engineering challenges and online travel around the ancient world. The senior Greek and French students experienced the delights of French and Hellenic cinema, while French students viewed the Eiffel Tower through Google Cardboard’s virtual reality before constructing their own Eiffel Towers. Others experimented with languages from around the world. We also placed a focus on indigenous languages at part of our celebration of NAIDOC.

On World Languages Day on the Thursday of that week we welcomed the esteemed actor, William Zappa, who performed his enthralling show about Homer’s The Iliad for Latin students and boys from Drama and English. Year 11 Italian ventured into the kitchen for an Italian cooking class, whilst the Spanish students were treated to a flamenco dancing show and lesson. Chinese students gathered in the Tupou College Centre at lunchtime to show their fancy footwork in the ‘Apple Dance’.

That evening, nearly 130 finalists competed in the Language Poetry Evening and Showcase and we congratulate all of the participants for their amazing renditions of poems in six different languages. During the evening, families were able to visit displays of work from each of our languages, getting their passport stamped and receiving a little Italian treat as a reward for their travels.

Congratulations to the following poetry winners:

Chinese