Last week, in the Pre-Prep, we held our annual ‘One World Week’ event, to celebrate diversity across the School and beyond. This popular event is held early in the School year to welcome families and expand our appreciation of world cultures.
As Gideon Zucker, Deputy Principal, explains: “One World Week is one of my favourite weeks of the School year. It encompasses so much of what the Pre-Prep is about and really sets the tone for the year ahead. Diversity and inclusion are key to so much of our work in the Pre-Prep, and One World Week gives us, our pupils and our parents a chance to celebrate that in the best way possible!”
This year’s event took place at the end of September. Each year group was given a different theme to inspire their activities across the week, and all teachers tailored their lessons to fit the theme. This year, Reception focussed on Food, Y1 were looking at Celebrations and Y2 concentrated on the theme of School and Family Life.
In preparation for the week, children were asked to recycle an old t-shirt and decorate it with anything they felt celebrated their culture and identity. As the event commenced on Monday, it was wonderful to see their personal creations and the joy and pride they took in expressing themselves.
In Drama lessons we launched an ever growing, multilingual collection of greetings from around the world by teaching each other the many different words we already know for “hello”. During our Music sessions, children taught their special family songs to the class, so that we could sing them together. We enjoyed learning songs from Japan, Spain, Russia and Wales to name but a few.
Parents and staff (from across all three schools) ran language workshops across the week. Children were treated to the linguistic delights of Italian, French, Dutch, Mandarin and Norwegian, through activities such as reading a book, learning some basic words/phrases and language-based games and activities. We took part in a huge range of workshops from parents in the school, focused around their heritage and family cultures, including activities such as Turkish marble painting and Jewish food tasting.
We had a day of drumming workshops for all classes, filling our corridors with rhythmic beats and laughter. Later in the week, children engaged in dance workshops led by the Dance Days Company, where they learnt a variety of dances from around the world. The routines they’d learnt during the day were performed to their families at our finale event – The One World Week Fair on Thursday evening. Parent volunteers set up stalls to celebrate different cultures, offering a range of activities for the children. Artwork was on display from the week’s activities and our dining hall offered a delicious menu of world dishes to sample.
Darren from Dance Days leading choreographed international routines
This much-loved event brings together the whole School community in a joyous celebration of cultures, traditions and heritages.
