LANGUAGES LEADERS 2023

We are working to build our team and to increase student agency and student voice this year. In order to do this, we have continued with our leaders from last year and put them in charge of running our new teams. At East, this has meant a big turnover, as our 2022 Year 9 students have moved to Main campus. We have some new leaders joining them this year:

The Languages team at Main:

Christina Tan (Year 10 - ongoing)

Milana Gavrilenko (Year 10 - ongoing)

Alice Hollingsworth (Year 10 - ongoing)

Anya Victoria Aquende (Year 10 - ongoing)

Montana Aloi (Year 10 - new)

Treya Venkatesh (Year 11 - new)

Ilya Zyuzin (Year 11 - new)

Lily Baldwin - (Year 11 - ongoing)

Luka Magee - (Year 12 - ongoing)

Sofia Linardou (Year 12 - new)

Our team at East have held their first self-directed meeting, and they have already come up with some amazing ideas for promoting languages this year:

The Languages team at East:

Maleesha Dharmadasa (Year 9 - ongoing)

All the following leaders are new:

Sara Kumar (Year 8)

Kiara Tomlinson (Year 9)

Justine Pinn (Year 9)

Jordan Yahalom (Year 9)

Yeri Soung (Year 9)

Angelina Kaminsky (Year 9)

Michael Scriva (Year 9)

Lamija Buturovic (Year 9)

Alex Do (Year 9)

Angelica Kutiepova (Year 9)

Mia McMahon (Year 9)

In this and upcoming newsletters, they will be writing about why they have chosen to take up this role:

Hi! My name is Jordi and I am one of the Languages Leaders this year at East Campus. I’m very excited to get the opportunity to work with the language teachers and other language leaders at McKinnon.

This is my third-year learning French at McKinnon and I have enjoyed every part of it. Learning a new language is a hard challenge and requires a lot of effort but because I enjoy it, it is extremely fun.

I am excited to be a leader and take on the role of promoting languages at McKinnon. I hope that we can get every student learning a language to enjoy it as much as I do. I can’t wait to share my ideas on ways to assist language learning. I hope to see many students participating in the Education Perfect languages championship!

Jordi Yahalom Year 9

EDUCATION PERFECT

By the time you read this newsletter, the annual Education Perfect competition (and our rivalry with Amaroo School in Canberra!) will be in full swing, having started with a defiant performance of the song ‘Get Back’ (our rightful position as number one in the world) on the outdoor stage at Main campus on Monday 6 March and a pizza-fueled launch party after school on Tuesday 7 March.

Monsieur Chamontin and the languages leaders have been rallying the troops - and in the next newsletter there will be a report on how we went!!

FIRST REFLECTIONS OF LEARNING GERMAN IN YEAR 7

After only a few weeks of learning German, students feel confident about the progress they have made so far.

Hallo, Ich bin Lara, I am currently in Year 7 studying German and this is how I feel so far: First I was unsure how hard German would be, but now I know it is not hard at all and my teacher has made it one of my favourite subjects, especially as I have learnt so much already. For example, I can have a small conversation (including what my name is, how I am, how old I am and if needed what my phone number is), recite the numbers from 0-20 and say some of the countries (in particular those surrounding Germany), where I'm from and where I live.

One of the main strategies my teacher uses to teach us is saying things in German whilst acting it out. I find this a useful way to teach and get us thinking.

I would also like to say thank you to my German teacher Andrea Fowler for teaching me so far and I look forward to the months ahead.

Lara Sumer

Over the last four weeks of learning German, I have enjoyed learning it because I feel confident about this language, and I need to go to Germany next. I love that it's easy but there are unique words to know. We learned how to introduce ourselves, the alphabet, numbers and countries. I am hoping to be able to speak much more German at the end of the year.

Swara Kalsariya

German so far this term has been really surprising. I thought it was going to be complicated words that I would not be able to understand but it has been the complete opposite. Ms Fowler has made class better by doing some interactive activities to help us understand German in dialogue with another person and has let us do things like Kahoot and Quizlet in class which always gets competitive. I’ve really enjoyed German and I’m looking forward to doing it through my schooling!

Auf Wirdersehen!

Gabe Williams

Learning German has been really fun and easy, and our teacher, Ms Fowler has been able to teach us German in such a way that I think was really creative. We play different things online to build our knowledge, for example all of us can ask ages, names, how to spell names and numbers from 1 - 20. Moreover, German is an easy language for us to comprehend, there are many words that are alike in many ways, enabling us to learn fast and fluently, and with the awesome teacher we've had we're learning even faster. I think that my experience with German has been really good so far, and I really think it's going to help me later on in life.

Danke fürs Lesen (Thank you for reading), auf Wiedersehen.

Ayushmaan Bagal

Hallo, ich bin Laura. It is now week five of secondary school. When I started I wondered how hard it was to learn a new language. I didn’t know anything about German and I was super nervous. Now in week five I feel fine. I’ve learnt the German alphabet, greetings and I even know how to count to 20! Learning German isn't as hard as I thought!

Laura Lu

Hallo! Ich heiße Emily und ich bin 12 Jahre alt. I started learning German four weeks ago. My cousins, aunty and uncle all speak German, so I decided it would be fun to learn it as well. Learning languages was never one of my strengths but I’ve learnt so much in the past four weeks. We were taught about starting conversations, countries and numbers. Numbers were so far my favourite to learn.

Emily Korn

SPANISH SISTER SCHOOL RELATIONSHIP

On Thursday 2 March, an online meeting was held with our sister school in Cuenca, Spain to re-establish post-COVID links. The meeting was attended by Andrea Fowler (Global Citizenship Coordinator), Jenny Lynd (Languages KLA manager), Ana Gomez (Spanish teacher), Maria Garcia (Art teacher) and the team from Cuenca under the leadership of Vice Principal Jesus Checa.

The sister school relationship with IES Fernando Zobel in Cuenca (a UNESCO World Heritage Town) was established in 2013 and an online exchange program, a visit of the Spanish coordinators and two student representatives as well as collaboration in Geography and the Arts were initiated before COVID. A trip and visit to our sister school was planned in 2019 and deposits collected when the pandemic hit in 2020.

Thank you to all teachers involved for the enthusiasm and suggested ideas for this program. We are looking forward to continuing the collaboration with our Spanish sister school.

Andrea Fowler & Jennifer Lynd

GOETHE INSTITUT AUSTRALIEN

Goethe Institut Australien promotes great cultural events, concerts and exhibitions, and German language courses in Australia. Please visit the website to find out more.

Jenny Lynd

Languages Learning Area Manager

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