We are excited to announce Portsmouth’s first-ever Celebrating Languages in Portsmouth week and would love as many schools as possible in the city to participate. This special week will take place from Monday 17 to Friday 21 March 2025, aligning with the University of Portsmouth’s Global Week. It will be a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the wealth of languages and cultures that enrich the lives of so many of our learners.

As this is a pioneering event, we encourage schools and all education settings to participate to the extent they are able. A shared Google Drive has been established, where colleagues can upload and exchange ideas, creating a directory of activities that can be used both this year and in future celebrations.

To spark initial ideas, consider having older students greet pupils in their first language at the start of the day, or try incorporating recipes from around the world with students explaining their significance, names, and ingredients in their own language. For those who wish to take it further, why not host a dedicated celebration day or plan rotating activities throughout the week?

Whatever your level of involvement, we invite all of our education settings to join us in this celebration and to reflect on how it could grow in the coming years to truly honour the vibrant tapestry of languages and backgrounds we are privileged to have in Portsmouth.

More information will follow shortly, outlining details of what we hope will be a wonderful opportunity to recognise and celebrate the richly diverse languages heritage of our learners.

Please get in touch at [email protected] if you would like to be more actively involved or have exciting ideas to share.

How your school can get involved:

Friendship competition: young people in Portsmouth are invited to create something which represents friendship to them. It could be a poster, a cartoon, a video, an audio file or a piece of poetry and should include the word for friend or friendship in a language of their choice, perhaps their home language or a language they are learning at school or independently.

The closing date for entries is midday on Friday 7 March 2025.

Celebrate Speaking (with NCLE, the British Council and ALL): Each February a festival of language is held when your students can show off their language skills. This can be a language they are learning at school or one they speak in their community. It’s about sharing a love of language and celebrating the diversity of people in the UK who speak a language other than English.

The steering group for the initiative ‘Portsmouth ~ City of Languages’ would like to invite all Portsmouth school and college leaders, or a representative, to attend a partners’ virtual meeting on Friday 29 November 2024 from 1pm – 2pm.

An agenda which includes the meeting link can be found here.

If you are keen to hear about what has already been established and find out how you can get involved, please visit the dedicated PEP website page and attend the meeting above.

Friday 22 March 2024 saw nearly 70 students at Charter Academy coming together to take part in a ‘Celebrating Language Diversity’ event run by EMAS and the University of Portsmouth  and based on a project run previously by Sarah Bawa-Mason and others as part of the Translation Nation Project 2010-2014.

As students entered the theatre, they were greeted by MFL trainee teachers from the university and each given a card printed with the word ‘hello’ in a language from around the world. The students had to do their best at having a go at saying the word and finding another student with the same language. These students then sat together at a table. Each table ended up with six or seven students and two trainee teachers.

Once settled at their tables, students were encouraged to say hello and to introduce themselves in a language that they knew and everyone else on the table had a go at repeating the language. The room came alive with different languages being spoken on every table!

The next part of the session focussed on which strategies can be used to enjoy a story in a language that you don’t understand. Tanya Riordan, from the University of Portsmouth, nearly sent the students to sleep with her short rendition of a story in French before introducing them to a range of strategies to bring the story alive. The students were able to identify a number of strategies used, from visuals, to colour coding, to use of voices, actors and props.

Marie Allen from EMAS then introduced the notion of translation: what it means, why we do it and why translated stories are so important. The students did a fantastic job of completing the translation quiz. Would you know for example, which wizarding school from Harry Potter is translated into ‘Poulard’ in French?

Students that can read in their first language had been identified prior to the session. These students were used as storytellers for their group. Using only their first language (and the strategies previously identified by the students), the stories were shared and the table worked their magic to decipher what the story was all about.

The afternoon session saw each and every student produce their very own book. They became translators and created a translated version of the story that had been shared with them. Some students made books in English, some in their own first language and some even made books in the language that they are learning at school! One pupil – whom we suggested might want to be a translator in the future – recreated his story with his very own rhymes!

A truly wonderful experience, enjoyed by all involved. The Assistant Head noted that ‘He heard students’ voices that day that he had never heard before.’ and a couple of quotes from the trainee teachers involved included: ‘What a lovely day Friday was, I thought it was such a well-run, well-thought out event by Tanya and Marie and what a great initiative that was really well received and enjoyed by the pupils. It was uplifting and inspiring to be part of.’ And ‘I think the student reading his story in Farsi to us all and the others on our table so enthusiastically turning into a book (from a story they understood not one word!) – 2 of them even wrote it in French – will stay as a memory from the PGCE course forever.’

For more information, please contact:

Marie Allen
Email: [email protected]

Tania Riordan
Email: [email protected]