Over 50 budding linguists from eight local schools gathered at Bearwood College near Winnersh on Thursday 27th June.
All of the children, from years 5 to 6, took part in a Language Challenge, masterminded by Bearwood’s Head of Modern Foreign Languages, Alistair Hoare. The event offered a fantastic opportunity for pupils to learn the basics of no less than six languages in just one day!
The Bearwood College teaching staff aimed to introduce participants to a range of basic vocabulary such as greetings, animals and numbers in Farsi, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Maori, Welsh and Zulu, and to share information on the culture and heritage of each nation. The pupils were organised into groups of six and each individual within a team got to experience a different language.
The morning culminated in a grand challenge, with each team being tested on the language and national facts for all the countries. It was absolutely vital that each team member paid attention earlier in the day as they were the sole representative for their language within their team!
The competition took place in the College’s 350-seat theatre and involved pupils from Daneshill, Ludgrove, White Waltham, Crosfields and Bearwood College Prep.
Bearwood College offers French and Spanish as part of the curriculum to pupils from Year 1 and Year 5 respectively, but as a successful international boarding school frequently offers additional tuition on request for other languages such as Mandarin, German, Italian, Latin and Russian.
The results of the challenge were as follows:
1st place = Daneshill 1
2nd place = Daneshill 2
3rd place = Moorlands Primary School
4th place = Park Lane Primary School
5th place = Bearwood College
6th place = White Waltham Academy
7th place = White Waltham Academy 2
8th place = Bearwood College 2
9th place = Bearwood College 3