Page 12 - Bloxhamist 2017-2018

ACADEMIC

LanGuaGes

Erasmus Project: course focused on boosting oral Latin gives students a glimpse into
comprehension through active debates,
another world which has profoundly
Living the Lingo written comprehension exercises and shaped our own and the people (just
listening skills through French life like us) who inhabited it.
Last year, the Modern Foreign and culture. Afternoon and evening venetia Moir, Fifth Form
Languages (MFL) Department was activities allowed staff to use the
successful in securing sought-after language and lessons learned and
EU funding for French and Spanish included a visit to Giverny, famous
to enhance MFL at Bloxham. Thanks for many of Monet’s impressionist
to the project, the department is paintings. They were joined by
introducing new language teaching teachers from schools across the
methodologies, providing up-to-date country, which enriched the overall
resources and creating more authentic learning experience. EL
language learning environments.
Running over two years, the project Latin
gives teachers the opportunity to visit
French and Spanish schools, develop
contacts and form lasting international So why bother with Latin? It develops
links leading to reinvigorate language intellectual rigour, attention to detail, Mr Devesa sharing his passion for paella
teaching at Bloxham. Here’s what logic, an understanding of the grammar
happened when our staff went to underpinning all the Romance
Santander, Spain and Rouen, France languages and expands English
earlier this year: vocabulary, amongst other things.
“Latin is a language,
During an eight-day trip in October
half term, Ms McCaffrey and Miss as dead as dead can
Lesu participated in intensive daily
Spanish language classes, to keep their be, first it killed the
Spanish top notch. In the afternoons,
they put into practice what they had Romans, now it’s
learnt in the classroom, exploring local killing me!”
cuisine and customs. They also took
part in a Sevillanas dance class and are
already planning to teach the Bloxham To understand the world of their set
students a few steps. Stay tuned! texts better, GCSE Latin students
They collected authentic teaching and travelled to Oxford in October to see the
learning resources and gained ideas Oxford University student production
to help them deliver exciting lessons of the Bacchae. First performed in
and update the learning displays at the late 5th century BC, this was an
Bloxham School. amazing production of Euripides’s play
in the original Greek, blended with
some modern technology to help the
They were joined in Rouen by Mr First Form students had fun recreating
Devesa, where their advanced French modern viewer engage with the story. Roman villas
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