MFL Book Week

The latest in our series of department-focused book weeks took place just before half-term, from the week commencing Monday 8 February. Pupils of all ages encountered poems in French, German and Spanish in the classroom, and this inspired many of them to put plume to paper and enter our age-banded poetry competitions. It was both rewarding and a little surprising for their teachers to witness both the enthusiasm with which they talked about the poems in class and the willingness with which they tackled the creative process themselves. The Year 8 boys took part in poetry recital competitions in the three languages, and once again we were impressed both with their engagement and with the quality of their recitals. Our congratulations go to Saihaj Singh (Spanish), Nayan Thapar (French) and Abbas Kalan (German) who won the competitions; along with their book tokens, they also won the opportunity to recite their poems in front of their peers at sectional assembly.

Our other main focus for the week was travel writing, and we were delighted to welcome Jon Bryant back to Habs. A former pupil and teacher of Modern Languages at the school, Jon is now a successful travel journalist. He made the trip from the South of France to freezing Elstree to give a well-received talk about how he made a career out of travel writing (interspersed with some most amusing reflections on his time as a pupil at Habs), before leading some Year 11 classes in a travel writing workshop.

There were numerous other things going on during the week: the boys enjoyed the linguistic code-cracking challenge they were faced with during the Friday tutor period, there was an assembly about Dante’s Inferno, the language assistants gave an overview of the press in their respective countries, and there were special displays in the department and in the library to promote the idea of reading in foreign languages or about foreign cultures.