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European Day of Languages 2026: Languages Unite!

We kicked off Languages Week with assemblies for all year groups, talking about the importance of languages as a force to bring us together; we are all linguists, be that a home heritage community language, a language you are learning at school, or a hobby on DuoLingo. Pupils completed their Language Portrait in tutor time (photos to follow!), which really showed what an incredible, diverse school we teach in!

On Tuesday we delivered a Languages Quiz at lunchtime to 3 competitive teams, and after school, Year 8 students stayed to watch the movie Coco.

On Wednesday lunchtime, pupils were invited to the library for a game of snap, or to design/decorate a bookmark to tie in with the Year of Reading.

Thursday can only mean one thing: Bake Off! Year 10 and 11 pupils stayed after school to bake Kladdkaka, a Swedish chocolate cake. Some delicious creations, and plenty of willing judges!

We also used the 'hello' stickers from the European Day of Languages website, asking staff to wear one, and created a challenge for pupils to speak to 20 members of staff and greet in the language they are wearing.

On Friday, we set up a treasure hunt around the school, with 10 questions linked to languages. The answers are displayed around the school site, and pupils need to find the answers faster than their classmates.

PLAN North Leamington

This week, we held our first Primary Languages Action Network (PLAN) meeting of the year! Language leads from Telford Juniors, Brookhurst, Milverton, and Parkgate came together to share best practice, collaborate on new curriculum strategies, and build stronger connections across our local schools. The overarching theme for the meeting was Inclusion in Languages.

SEND:

We identified that much of the pedagogy we see in the languages classroom is beneficial to our SEND learners, such as repetition, teaching of key vocabulary, choral repetition and dual coding.

Multilingual Learners:

Discussions around how we celebrate diversity, showcase and celebrate pupils’ linguistic skills included sharing of ideas such as:

Using native speakers in the classroom
Having Multilingual Language Ambassadors - representatives for their language, buddy for newly arrived pupils.
Young Interpreters scheme (£70 cost) where EAL pupils can help new starters or pupils with limited English settle in by translating or chatting in their home language
Running Culture Club or Culture Day - celebrating pupils’ identities, a great way to involve parents.
Making space for languages - that could be physical space, such as a library, or a conversation club, or just acknowledging it in classroom practice. More to follow on the Swanswell blog on this one!

Links & Partnerships

Aside from the Inclusion theme, teachers were keen to look at partnerships and opportunities and we spoke about:

International School Award - a great way to recognise your school's international work as part of the curriculum and helps embed it within your school's culture.
Erasmus+ funding
Spanish teacher webinars from Edinumen
Have your say in shaping Professional Development being offered by the University of Warwick with this CPD Survey.
Pen pal links - we acknowledged the barriers in terms of GDPR, but would love to hear from others who have successfully navigated this!

Leeds: City of Languages

More and more Cities of Languages are popping up, which is wonderful to see. The value being placed on diversity, multilingualism and culture is so important. Leeds have recently launched and created activities for schools to use, which are available here.

The ALL has a central page for Cities of Languages, and you can find it here.