22 November with a twist of diversity!

27 ноября 2018

Despite a rather gloomy beginning to the morning of English Day, the atmosphere was full of joy over at the Moscow Economic School’s campus in Zaitsevo. Not only was Thursday 22^nd November Thanksgiving Day but English Day. This wasn’t any old ‘English day’ where students talked about England and America but, in true IB style, students looked at the culture of English in a global context and how other cultures have influenced the culture of English-speaking countries.

 In the morning, the nursery school and the PYP held their English Day. There was a great variety of activities and performances such as the nursery school’s magnificently enjoyable performance of ‘Little Shark’, whose performance was joined by Emma Mischenko (Spanish), Alexandra Volochkovich (Drama) and Tatiana Nikitina (Maths), who participated rather actively.

 Thus followed a performance about endangered animals in the ‘Red Book’ – a reminder of the problems facing many English-speaking African countries who are dealing with the challenge of illegal hunting. We then had a quiz and tongue twisters, followed by an arousing performance of ‘Hello Goodbye’ from the third grade. All students found it entertaining and arousing – despite it being held in the morning, there were no tired or yawning faces!

 In the afternoon, the MYP and DP departments hosted their English day. Our students covered a variety of topics such as money and banks in English-speaking countries, how to cook chicken curry (which had been voted the UK’s most popular dish putting ‘Fish ‘n chips’ into second place), a quiz in the form of Jeopardy and Misha Broyan’s outstanding and somewhat unorthodox performance as ‘Raj Kapur’ in which we learned about India’s most legendary Bollywood figure. Last but not least was a spectacular Indian dance led by the 5^th grade whose marvellous music certainly helped to round off an enjoyable performance.

 Student feedback was more than positive – the general feedback was that there was a variety of performances from each grade and not the usual singing and dancing which they had come to expect. The main words to describe the afternoon were ‘funny’, ‘hilarious’ and ‘thought-provoking because of the range of topics presented in the quiz and by the students.

 

Written by Mark Dixey,

English language and literature teacher

MES, Odintsovsky campus