On Friday 19th February, BIS celebrated ‘Languages in Our Lives Day’. BIS is full of different languages being spoken and studied by many members of our students and staff, and we know that many of our community members have had different languages in their lives at different times, as they have travelled all over the world and lived in different places. This special event is a way for us to celebrate all of the languages and cultures at BIS with lots of different activities.
On Friday morning, the corridors of the main building were full of Preschool and Primary students doing a ‘language treasure hunt’, and many of them also dressed in amazing outfits that represented a language, culture or country important to them. Meanwhile, our remote-learners had the opportunity to do a scavenger hunt at home, helping them find different languages in unexpected places in their homes.

All of our pre-school and PYP students (remote and physical learners) also took part in some mini language lessons, trying out two different languages – amongst the selection were Welsh, Hindi, Japanese, German, Russian Sign Language and Polish.

Meanwhile, MYP students got to try out two different languages as well, as
we mixed up our teachers for the afternoon and students learned Kyrgyz,
Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin or Urdu… to name a few!
We didn’t forget our IGCSE and DP students – they were treated to a multilingual poetry reading in assembly (Russian, Kyrgyz, Italian and
French), and we watched a video made by the Bailanysh News team, featuring lots of untranslatable words and phrases presented by our
secondary school students (in languages such as Swedish, Dutch, Romanian, Azeri and Georgian).
It was wonderful to celebrate this day with our staff and students from across the school. Along with these photos, students and staff can remember the day for the next few weeks by taking a look at lots of languages at BIS by looking at the ‘languages wall’ in the school café. We are so proud to be a school that truly values and celebrates linguistic diversity, and we are already excited about ‘Languages in Our Lives’ in 2022!
Esther Johnson, Head of Language Acquisition, Spanish Teacher