Four business ambassadors shared their language journeys with over 200 pupils from nine regional secondary schools as part of our regional languages festival. Explaining how they use French, German, Spanish and Italian in a range of industry settings was a powerful message to the region’s learners. We heard how an engineer used his skills both…
Look where languages took me?
Two former pupils from schools who took part in a visit to Tuebingen in Germany, organised by the county council, share their stories about how languages changed their lives. Anne McElvoy and Fiona Hill Languages have been a huge part of my life, both personally and professionally – and the roots of that were the…
Festival of Languages a great success
More than 3000 pupils took part in a fantastic range of activities as part of Express Yourself North East, the region’s latest festival of languages. Durham University delivered 40 language taster sessions to pupils in Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish. We ran Wake it, Shake it in Spanish, a masterclass…
New funding opportunities for schools – grants for travel to partner schools
We know that foreign travel seems a distant prospect for many schools at the moment. However, the Government will soon announce that it is opening applications for grants for pupil travel across the globe as part of its Turing scheme. The application window is to be very small but will deal with applications for the…
Express Yourself – North East Festival of Languages
A fabulous celebration of languages in our region. A mix of live events, pre-recorded content, films, workshops, competitions and online resources to promote language learning in your classroom and school. Full programme is available at http://www.expressyourselfne.com
Christmas decoration project
Over 6000 pupils from 250 schools in 19 countries took part in a remarkable project to share warm wishes and a special decoration for their partner schools’ Christmas trees. Schools exchanged decorations with up to 25 other schools across Europe and also reported on how the pandemic was affecting them in their schools in the…
Warum? Why German?
More people live in Germany than any other European country, it has the continent’s largest economy and German is the most widely spoken first language in the whole of Europe. On Monday January 25th, a special webinar was arranged to discover more about Germany, its links with a region of the UK and how businesses…
Marking the start of the new lunar year
We are working to deliver an online programme to mark the start of the Year of the Ox. This will be supported by a new British Council education pack https://www.britishcouncil.org/school-resources/find/classroom/year-of-the-ox We are planning online question and answer sessions with Chinese students, craft sessions, Chinese language taster sessions and specially made films. To register your school’s…
Christmas decoration project in focus
291 schools from across Europe came together this year to make and share Christmas tree decorations. Together with the decorations, they shared news about their own country’s preparations for the Christmas period in times past and in this year of the global pandemic. There was such interest in the project that TV company ARTE asked…
Coronavirus explained in Spanish
This short film in Spanish introduces learners to vocabulary they will need to discuss the current pandemic.
