Eurovision - IRS Style

Yesterday I had the dubious priviledge of being involved in the organisation of my first ever whole year group event.

I chose Year 8 as the unwilling victims of this activity and we labelled it "EUROVISION". Now if truth be told it didn't really end up anything like the real Eurovision, it was more of a day that involved Year 8 finding out "stuff" about Europe and the EU. They did Internet Research, Geography, Art, Music and Languages in a kind of carousel. As far as I can tell, initial responses from Year 8 were very favourable.

In Art, they set to work designing new flags for EU Nations and even for the EU itself (well the stars are a bit boring...) and I've seen some wonderful designs that really the capture the nature of Europe, bringing in flavours of many member countries.

Music involved comparing various European National Anthems and, in particular listening to two very different versions of Ode an die Freiheit, the traditional version and this one:

They were then charged with the task of creating their own EU Anthems on the keyboards. All of which was really enjoyed by many Year 8s.

Geography saw them learning the names of key European countries and doing some Independent Learning in groups, researching physical and economic geography of chosen countries. Pupils found it fascinating to learn that the UK is so small in comparison to many other countries. I think some were quite surprised at just how big some countries are.

For Languages they had two possible activities, one involving learning about the origins of European Languages, which went down really well with the pupils and the other involving Spanish and designers. Both activities were really well received by the Year 8s.

The ICT Research project was rather chaotic, being the first activity of the day and involving lots of shared computers. Oh, and of course the old "blocked" problems (which was curious, as I'd checked them on Friday!).

I made a little plenary activity at the end. The pupils had to watch the video below and list which countries they recognised as being represented. There are 14...go on, see how many you get!


www: pupils seemed to like it and most staff seemed positive by the end of the day.

ebi: better organisation of the first ICT activity and don't put them all in to do that at once, don't get so stressed, check websites again and again and again.

Will it happen again? I hope so! (I believe so, with the introduction of project weeks next year!)