On Wednesday 26th September, we celebrated the European Day of Languages across the whole school with a focus on Poland.

Foundation Stage

In Reception, we participated in various events across the morning. These included attending an assembly with our EAL Governor Beata who shared with us information about Poland including what Polish people eat and their education. We were very lucky to have Mrs Kowalczyk read us Goldilocks and the Three Bears in Polish! This was very enjoyable and we learnt how to say Goldilocks. Mrs Kowalczyk also taught us how to say different words and together we sang 'Head, shoulders, knees and toes'. Later on the in the day we learnt Nursery Rhymes/Songs in Polish including: Humpty Dumpty, 5 Little Ducks, Old McDonald and Incy Wincy Spider. We noticed that some words are the same but most are different. 

Year 1  

In Year 1 we had a fun day celebrating the European Day of Languages. We all came to school dressed in red and white. At the beginning of the day, we learnt some interesting facts from our EAL governor, Beata. She told us about her home country, Poland and we enjoyed hearing all about traditional Polish foods and games. We then went back to the classroom where we designed our own Polish dresses, made flags, cut out symmetrical paper cuttings in the style of the Polish national symbol and built traditional Polish castles out of Lego. As part of our DT work, we designed, made and evaluated our own sweet and savoury open sandwiches – a common treat enjoyed by children in Poland. Our Polish children taught us how to say hello, goodbye and thankyou in Polish. We then enjoyed some traditional Polish dancing in pairs with Beata.

 

Year 2

Year 2 spent their afternoon looking at where Poland was on a map and compared the size of the country to England. We also looked at the Polish flag and made our own to take home. As our story of the day we listened to the Polish legend 'The Mermaid of Warsaw and draw pictures of what we thought the mermaid may look like. Our Polish classmates also taught us how to say hello, goodbye and thank you in Polish. We had a great day! 

 

Year 3

Year 3 learnt lots of information about the country of Poland, we learnt some greetings and the numbers up to 5 in Polish, ably taught by bilingual members of the class. A group of children cooked Pierogi with our EAL Governor, Beata, which the whole class later tasted, while the rest of the class made Polish biscuits and iced them with the Polish flag.

 

Year 4

We celebrated the European Day of Languages by taking part in lots of exciting activities. After an informative assembly from our EAL governor Beata, we learned even more about Poland back in our classrooms. We found out many interesting facts about the country. Children there don't start school until they're seven years old and the country is actually the 9th largest in the world. Our Polish speaking children helped us to learn a few phrases and greetings, such as czech and milo mi. We also learned how to sing heads, shoulders, knees and toes in Polish. We tasted some traditional delicacies such as, pierogi, pickles and chleb and we evaluated the products based on a set of criteria which included, the packaging, the shelf life and of course, the taste! Most of us seemed to prefer the Polish biscuits because they reminded us of jaffa cakes. Towards the end of the day, we looked at some fantastically illustrated maps of Poland and the UK and compared the countries by finding similarities and differences between them. We noticed that Poland is surrounded by other countries, such as Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, whereas the UK is surrounded by sea. We really enjoyed finding out about rivers and mountains in each of the countries, as well as, cities, famous landmarks and the native birds and animals.We had an amazing day dressed in the polish flag colours and can't wait to find out which language we will be celebrating next year! 

Year 5

We were very lucky in year 5 on European Language Day as we have a variety of
children who can speak another language. We asked some of our Polish speaking
children if they would like to be the teacher. Julia, Joshua and Nikola enjoyed their
role, teaching the stingray class how to count in Polish. They all agreed the class
tried their best but they needed to work on their pronunciation!
Poland is home to many famous people and year 5 were given the opportunity to
research into some of these people, ranging from successful footballers to Marie
Curie. We all learnt something knew!
We also had a chance to experience some Polish craft, using a template, card and
scissors to re-create some eye-catching Wycinanki. This proved to be harder than it
looked and tested the children’s perseverance. We were all proud of our finished
pieces.

 

Year 6

In Year 6, we invited the Polish children in the class to become the teachers for a lesson. Klara, Hanna and Adam taught us how to play rock, paper, scissors, sing Happy Birthday and how to say other useful phrases all in Polish. They did a great job explaining how to pronounce these new words. We were able to find lots of similarities and differences between Polish and English words and cultures.