Exploring the world from the classroom

Children at a West Norfolk school enjoyed a taste of different cultures from the comfort of their own classrooms when they took part in ‘Around the World Day’.Pupils of all ages at Gaywood Primary celebrated a diverse selection of countries from across the globe, exploring their customs, taking part in themed activities and even sampling the cuisine.“We thought that it would be nice if each year group had a different country and focused solely on that,” said Melissa Grief, Year 2 teacher at the school, which is a member of the West Norfolk Academies Trust.

“It meant that we then had six countries to focus on and create some engaging activities based around them.”Reception pupils looked at South Africa; while Year 1 studied Mauritius; Year 2 ‘visited’ Spain; Year 3 celebrated India; Year 4 spent the day ‘in’ Japan; Year 5 ‘went to’ Greece; and Year 6 explored New Zealand.“The children took part in a range of activities, such as food tasting, learning the language, writing fact files, and creating postcards,” continued Miss Grief, who organised the event with fellow Year 2 teacher Eden Bloomfield.

“The children were dressed in colours of the flag of their year group’s country, and the classrooms were decorated with flags, and food brought in. “In Year 2, we learnt some basic phrases in Spanish and learnt numbers to ten. Years 3 and 4 did the same – learning Indian and Japanese phrases and numbers. Year 4 also explored how to write Japanese words and numbers too. They also learnt how to eat with chopsticks.“Examples of food tasting we did were: churros for Spain, naan bread for India, fruit tasting for South Africa, and tzatziki dips for Greece.” Gaywood is currently working towards a British Council International School Award and the Around the World event formed part of the school’s application.

“The British Council International Award is an award given to schools to celebrate and give accreditation to work they are doing internationally, learning a bit more about the global society they are part of,” explained Miss Grief, who is spearheading the process with Miss Bloomfield.“We have to submit one activity for the Foundation Award which shows we are celebrating other countries and learning about them, relating to the curriculum. Therefore, we decided to do an ‘Around the World’ enrichment day to cover this across the school.“We can then gather evidence from all the activities that have taken place and submit this for the award.”

“The Around the World Day events were important as they increased our pupils’ knowledge on other countries and allowed them to talk about their own personal experiences of that country too,” she added. “One of our school values is diversity, and we talk about the importance of celebrating other countries a lot. It is important for us as a school to continue to enrich our children’s knowledge regularly on other countries, so they have a good awareness of our global society.“It would mean a lot for our school to receive the Foundation Award. We can then work towards hopefully achieving the other awards, such as intermediate and accreditation.”