The European Day of Languages is celebrated on 26th September. It would be nice to do a school assembly to mark this. If you are starting out as a German teacher, it will give you an opportunity to run an assembly and establish German right at the start of the school year. For 2014, I made the following presentation. You will need to adapt it for future years but feel free to pick and choose bits to use. I have added some notes underneath to help you deliver the assembly.

Slide 2

Ask the children if they know what flag this is. Explain that the 12 stars represent the 12 original member states on the European Union

Slide 3

Ask the children how many languages are spoken in the 28 member states. Take guesses - say more or less. The answer is 225.

• 225 languages is only 3% of the world's total
• 75% of the people in the world speak no English

The European Union is the blue countries on the slide (and also Romania and Bulgaria).  We have the freedom to live and work in any of these countries but it would be much easier to do this if we learn the language.

For Example, 1 million British people live in France and Spain.

Slide 4

Ask the children what they think the most spoken mother tongue languages in Europe are. Leave Polish with 40 million at the bottom. You will need to know what comes next and as the children say the next language (reverse order), reveal the answer.

Slide 5

Introduce the clip of Alex from London, an Oxford University student who speaks English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan and Italian 

After the clip explain that:

• Learning a language helps the thinking process. It makes more connections in the brain which can help improve your general intelligence
• There are thousands of words in most languages but you only use the same few hundred everyday in normal conversation
• If you use a language in your job when you're older, you'll earn 8% more money

Slide 6

Ask the children (and teachers) if anyone can say the three phrases in a different European language other than English. Go first and do it in German. Then get volunteers to come up, specify the language and then say the three phrases. Give these children a reward. It may be useful to inform some children you know who can do this beforehand. Refer to the map on slide 7 as they say the three phrases to point where that language is spoken.

Slide 8

I set a competition to finish the assembly which was as follows:

Introduce the German post box and Felix and Franzi, who are famous German judges. Post a letter into the post box telling them what you know about  Europe. You could draw a picture, map, flag, write what you know and even write something in German. Explain that the post box will be left somewhere all week and in the following week's assembly you will announce the winners and give out prizes. Tell the children to put their entry into an envelope and post it into the post box. Don't forget to write your name and class on the envelope!

Slide 9

Play the song as the children leave the hall. Ask the children if they recognise the song and if they noticed anything different about it.