Eurovision – IRS Style

Yesterday I had the dubious priviledge of being involved in the organisation of my first ever whole year group event.

I chose Year 8 as the unwilling victims of this activity and we labelled it “EUROVISION”. Now if truth be told it didn’t really end up anything like the real Eurovision, it was more of a day that involved Year 8 finding out “stuff” about Europe and the EU. They did Internet Research, Geography, Art, Music and Languages in a kind of carousel. As far as I can tell, initial responses from Year 8 were very favourable.

In Art, they set to work designing new flags for EU Nations and even for the EU itself (well the stars are a bit boring…) and I’ve seen some wonderful designs that really the capture the nature of Europe, bringing in flavours of many member countries.

Music involved comparing various European National Anthems and, in particular listening to two very different versions of Ode an die Freiheit, the traditional version and this one:

They were then charged with the task of creating their own EU Anthems on the keyboards. All of which was really enjoyed by many Year 8s.

Geography saw them learning the names of key European countries and doing some Independent Learning in groups, researching physical and economic geography of chosen countries. Pupils found it fascinating to learn that the UK is so small in comparison to many other countries. I think some were quite surprised at just how big some countries are.

For Languages they had two possible activities, one involving learning about the origins of European Languages, which went down really well with the pupils and the other involving Spanish and designers. Both activities were really well received by the Year 8s.

The ICT Research project was rather chaotic, being the first activity of the day and involving lots of shared computers. Oh, and of course the old “blocked” problems (which was curious, as I’d checked them on Friday!).

I made a little plenary activity at the end. The pupils had to watch the video below and list which countries they recognised as being represented. There are 14…go on, see how many you get!

www: pupils seemed to like it and most staff seemed positive by the end of the day.

ebi: better organisation of the first ICT activity and don’t put them all in to do that at once, don’t get so stressed, check websites again and again and again.

Will it happen again? I hope so! (I believe so, with the introduction of project weeks next year!)

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Eurovision

Saturday night was one of my favourite nights of the year-The Eurovision Song Contest. I’ve always loved it ever since I was very young, I think even back then I was fascinated to listen to all of the different langauages.

Over the years it has gone in and out of fashion, leaving me feeling sometimes “dead cool” and other times “a bit odd” (no surprises there then!). All of a sudden it seems to be back “in”, I don’t know whether this is because of Lord Lloyd Webber himself wrote this year’s ditty for the UK, whether it is the change of host – although I did find some of Graham Norton’s comments quite similar to the whit of Terry Wogan in previous years!. Whatever the reasons, I sat down last night, with several fellow Twitterers (virtually, of course) feeling not quite so “odd” as in other years, looking forward to a night of cultural diversity and linguistic delight.

The event itself offered up its usual oddities with Gladiators in the Ukrainian set and opera singers from Sweden and, as ever I was able to learn some new languages. I was, however very disappointed in several entries who sang in English. How can we ever encourage our pupils that it’s important to be able to speak different languages if all they see is speakers of foreign languages singing in and speaking in English? It just adds to the arrogant English attitude of  ”everyone speaks English, so why should I learn a new language”. Even at an event which celebrates cultural diversity! Why can’t they celebrate linguistic diversity too?

That said, the competition was won by an English Language song…however, I didn’t like the entry for the song, it has to be said.

I don’t seem to be able to embed the video so you’ll have to follow the link below to see why I like the song!

Alexander Rybak

(I also annoy me husband by getting cross with the news for dubbing over foreigners speaking their own languages, instead of giving subtitles!)

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Alternative Eurovision Song Contest

Earlier this week, I was invited by Jess McCulloch to join the Alternative Eurovision Song Contest Ning Network. The idea – a fanatstic idea of Jo Rhys-Jones of Talkabout Primary MFL – being to attempt to do better than the real Eurovision Contestants in May. Each person has to choose a country to reperesent in the “alternative” contest (although I am assured that we don’t have to sing in that country’s language).
So, having nothing better to do with my time, having Dutch pupils in school on an eTwinning project, a trip to Cologne to plan and a podcasting competition to enter and that’s not even counting the IWB challenge and Animoto Challenge, I decided that this would be the ideal opportunity to get the Yr 7 pupils involved in. I’m going to work with our G&T Yr 7s and we’re going to represent the Netherlands (surprise, surprise). I’m actually going to get a teacher who actually is Dutch and works at our school to help us to learn a song in Dutch. I’m hoping that this will also provoke interest in Dutch, ready for recruitment to the Project with Zeldenrust Steelantcollege next year.

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