Bienvenue à Bannockburn - the Junior Language Challenge will be returning this year again!

 Bonjour tout le monde! 

Madame Seaton here, 

I hope you all had a safe but enjoyable Summer and are excited to be back at school! Some things might be a little different to last year but many aspects of school are staying the same - you  will have weekly French lessons, although sometimes with me in person, other times with me virtually and even some French lessons will be taught by your class teachers!

Very soon I will be organising the first stage of this year's Junior Language Challenge; last year we had 4 children progress to the final stages which was amazing - how may can we get this year? 

I am not sure what the first language will be, but in the meant time, check out this web page which gives information about the JLC and how it all works, so that as soon as registration is open for our school, I can register you if you want to take part (please note, you don't need to register yourselves - I will do all this through our school account!) and then you can get started and get learning!

https://utalklanguagegames.com/

Junior Language Challenge 2019-2020 - what a year!

Each year children from Bannockburn  take part in the Junior Language Challenge.

This competition, known as the JLC, invites children from Key Stage 2 to play online language games using the Utalk website and app, where they compete to earn points as their language skills improve.

Each year we do very well and, whilst this year the JLC did not run as it usually does (without the live finals and very tense atmospheres!), we have had some amazing achievements in the competition.

This year we had 4 children make it to the final rounds: Natalia and Karan (Year 6), Eryk (Year 4) and Amber (Year 3). A record number of other children entered this year and took part in Round 1; each entry costs £5 with the money going to the charity 1Billion, so we raised a huge amount of money by entering too!

Mrs Seaton will be making contact with all those who have won one of these 3 prizes for their efforts:

• Bronze Certificates: as congratulations for becoming a Regional Finalist.
• Silver Certificates: for our Finalist Champions, who gained full marks for their Round Two language. They will also be awarded 2,500 uCoins, to be used to unlock the topics and languages of their choice.
• Gold Certificates: for those children who managed to gain full marks in both Round One and Round Two. For this incredible achievement, these Champions of Champions will be rewarded with a Gold Certificate and 10,000 uCoins to be used on the uTalk app as they wish.

If you think you might be one of the lucky ones who has earned a certificate (or maybe even some uCoins to spend on your future language learning!) then get in touch with Mrs Seaton via the learning toegther email address and she will send you more information about how to claim your prize.

Well done to everyone who took part this year and if you want to take part next year, speak to Mrs Seaton in September when she has more information.

Bannockburn Trio Reach the JLC Semi-Finals

Way back in March a number of children from Bannockburn took part in round 1 of the Junior Language Challenge, a competition run by Utalk to raise money for the children's charity One Billion. After lots of hours of studying Spanish in their spare time, 3 competitors, Karan, Meltem and Natalia, got through to the second round, where the new language to learn and be tested on was Khmer - do you know which country this language comes from?

On Friday 14th September the children, their families and Mrs Seaton visited Cranmore School in Horsley for the live semi-finals, where they competed in a tense but thrilling live Khmer language challenge against 40 other children from schools across the South-East of England. 

Whilst they narrowly missed out on places in the top 10,  we are all extremely impressed by their newly acquired language skills and are very proud of their amazing efforts.

Well done everyone!

Junior Language Challenge Semi Finals

In March 2017 a team of budding linguists from Bannockburn took part in the Junior Language Challenge, run by Utalk in order to raise money for the children's charity 1 Billion. After lots of hours of studying French in their spare time, we had one competitor, Ashish from Year 6, who got through to the second round, where the new language to learn and be tested on was Japanese!

On Thursday 14th September Ashish and Miss Ansell from Bannockburn visited Cranmore School in Horsley for the live semi-finals, where he competed in a live Japanese language challenge against 30 other children from schools across the South-East of England. Ashish came 5th and whilst he narrowly missed out on a place in the final (where the final language to be challenged will be Zulu!) we are all extremely impressed by his newly acquired language skills and are very proud of his fantastic efforts.

Well done Ashish!

The next Junior Language Challenge will start in March 2018, so Miss Ansell will keep you posted!