Our Week of Languages kicked off in style with an assembly by our Year 13 MFL Reps and Year 12 Ambassadors. Head of MFL/German, Mrs Schindler-Smith introduced this year’s theme of Legends and Stories, linked to the importance of listening and reading in other languages. The Reps then shared the cultural importance of these stories through the centuries and across the world, from the French Cendrillon to Chinese proverbs and the legend of La Llorona, a mythological woman in Mexican and Latin American oral tradition, who features as a song in the Disney movie Coco.

During the week, celebrations revolved around 100 years of Surrealism in the French, German and Italian departments.  In German lessons, students in all year groups learned about Kafka’s Metamorphosis while Mrs Schindler-Smith led an MFL trip with twenty seven of our German students travelling to Oxford to see Kafka: Making of an Icon. The exhibition marks the 100th anniversary of the author’s death, celebrating not only his achievements and creativity but also how he continues to inspire new literary, theatrical and cinematic creations around the world.

We also enjoyed making our own Surrealist art inspired by Italian artist and writer Giorgio de Chirico during breaktimes!

As well as enjoying a lovely variety of international foods made by our wonderful catering team for lunch, there were huge queues for our Crêpes Café where students had to ask Mme Spencer and the Reps in French for a crêpe with various toppings. Délicieux! On German Day, we also held a German bake off at break. Lecker! In French lessons, our younger students explored extracts of tales (Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast in the original French language) while our older French pupils carried out research and answered comprehension questions on tales linked with specific regions of France or Francophone world.

🇫🇷 Crêpes au chocolat, anyone? Our Crêpes Café proved as popular as ever with customers asking in French for the delicious homemade crêpes at lunch from the Y13 French Reps & Mme Spencer, while students made their own surrealist art inspired by de Chirico! 🇮🇹#NHEHSLanguagesWeek pic.twitter.com/ZchXcjp4Yn

— NottingHill&Ealing (@nhehs) October 14, 2024

For our Sixth Form MFL students, we were delighted to invite Prof. Mary Harrod from Warwick University to NHEHS for an amazing Film Masterclass on the box office smash hit (and A level set film) Intouchables starring Omar Sy. Our Year 13 Hispanists also enjoyed a brilliant Q&A session with Quique Palomo, a renowned illustrator who created the graphic novel, Vida y Muerte de Federico García Lorca alongside Ian Gibson. Quique truly brought Lorca to life for our students!

In Spanish lessons students learned about the Galician and Chilean myths, La Pincoya and Las Meigas, as well as the Valencian tradition of los ninots and San Dionís, La Llorona from Mexico and Taíno legends.

On Wednesday we celebrated Chinese. During morning break, Mrs Tang, our Chinese Language Assistant taught pupils a traditional fan dance and, at lunchtime, Mr Piesse kicked off the karaoke singing the Mandarin song Gongxi Gongxi, and girls all had a go!

🇨🇳 Senior pupils learning a Chinese fan dance at morning break #NHEHSLanguagesWeek🇨🇳 pic.twitter.com/YOir0eEvdu

— NottingHill&Ealing (@nhehs) October 15, 2024

A huge thanks to all our MFL teachers and Reps for a fabulous week!