Whitehouse Common Primary -

Excellent Work (Week Beginning 1/10/18)

Newsletter 5th October 2018

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Celebrating linguistic and cultural diversity - Day 7

In Y6 RE in the summer term, there is a series of lessons about the beauty of words. When Sra. Stevens teaches this, she obviously gives it a languages twist and shares some beautiful words from other languages to discuss. There are many words that are untranslateable as a single word, requiring several or even several sentences to explain. This article lists 38 and there are a few favourites below drawn from this article. Do you have any favourite words that come from other languages? 

Goya

(n) the suspension of disbelief that occurs in good storytelling; a story that feels like reality.

Urdu

Ubuntu

(n) the belief that we are defined by our compassion and kindness to others

Nguni (South Africa)

Waldeinsamkeit

(n) the feeling of being alone in the woods

German.

Tsundoku

(n) the act of buying a book and leaving it unread, often piled together with other unread books

Japanese

Celebrating linguistic and cultural diversity - Day 6

The INTERNATIONAL CHALLENGE was sent home with children ten days ago after an assembly in which Señora Stevens launched our fortnight celebrating linguistic and cultural diversity to KS1 and 2. 

The children have been posed an International Challenge consisting of 20 tasks related to languages and culture. Children can choose how many and which tasks they wish to complete and record their responses on the challenge sheet. Anyone who completes 8 or more tasks will receive a certificate. Complete more than 12 and children will be entered into a prize draw. 

KS2 can post their entries in the white box in the Oaks Hall; anyone in KS1 should give their entry to their teacher who will pass it on to Señora Stevens.

The closing date to return the challenges is Friday 5th October. 

Celebrating linguistic and cultural diversity - Day 5

Did you know that there are languages that still exist in the world but are only spoken by a few people so are in danger of dying? 

They include Taushiro and Kaixana that only have one speaker each, Chemehuevi that has three speakers and Ongota which is spoken by people in a small village in Ethiopia. The problem with these languages is that the people who speak them are old, and young people aren't learning them as all these languages exist in places where there is another official language that is used day to day, like Spanish, English or French. Dictionaries have been written for a few of the languages and in some cases, there are programmes to try and teach younger people how to understand and speak them before it's too late. 

Find out more in this very interesting article 

Another language that is rare and also very interesting doesn't use words but whistles! Here's a video about the language that dates back to Ancient Greece - look Year 3! - and is still used in Antio, a Greek island village. And Silbo Gomero, used on the island of La Gomera in the Canary Islands, was named by UNESCO on their list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.

Excellent Work (Week Beginning 24/9/18)

Belonging - a whole school project.

At the start of the year, Years 1 to 6 all spent some time looking at a beautiful book by Jeannie Baker entitled Belonging. A picture book, it features the view from the same window over the course of the life of Tracey from her birth into adulthood. It charts the changes in her life as well as in her surroundings and those around her. Each picture (across a double page) is full of detail and many children were frustrated that they needed more time to spot everything that was happening and to fully appreciate the changes between the different scenes. Over the book, the neighbourhood in which Tracey lives changes, partly due to time but also to do with the people in her community, and this was the springboard into discussions about our own sense of belonging and of what it means to be part of a community.

In assemblies, children were asked what it meant to belong and some suggestions were 'feeling safe', feeling 'at home' and 'feeling part of something and not on the outside.' We discussed how there are no outsiders at Whitehouse Common Primary and thought about how we might ensure that everyone feels safe, at home and that they belong.  In classes, children continued these discussions and recorded their ideas in a variety of ways. Each class summarised their activities and thoughts on a large sheet of card and these have been compiled into a large book. So if you're visiting in the near future, have a look at the beautiful artwork, thoughtful ideas and considered opinions of our pupils in our special book which is in the Acorns reception area.

Celebrating linguistic and cultural diversity - Day 4

Year 4 have been comparing the days of the week in nine different languages recently, and spotting patterns between some of them. For example, Spanish, French, Italian and Catalan are all quite similar and seem to all be related to Latin, and English, German and Norwegian seem to be related to one another too. We discussed why this might be and also have a discussion about which came first, Mars the god or Mars the planet? What do you think?

If you want to compare the days of the week in a large number of languages, some less well known that others, Omniglot (the online encyclopaedia of  wriitng systems and languages) has a large chart of them. It even includes sound files for some, so if you want to know how to pronounce the days of the week in Swedish or Czech or even Luxembourgish, you have a model to copy! The site also has an interesting explanation of the origins of the days of the week in English as well as other languages. (There was much excitement when children realised that a recent film character, complete with hammer, has a day of the week named after him!)