90 pupils from Christ Church Primary School (North Tyneside) and St Paul’s CE Primary and Gosforth Central Middle School (Newcastle) enjoyed special ‘Experience Japan’ workshops with The Japan Society on 14th March at Newcastle Civic Centre. The event is one of a series of world languages and cultures events offered free to schools as part of this year’s Express Yourself: North East Festival of Languages, hosted and co-ordinated by International Newcastle.
The children learned about the country of Japan and its culture and traditions with Rebecca Lee and Lucy Hawksley from The Japan Society. They took part in workshops where they learned Japanese words and numbers with Fumika Cartlidge from Newcastle University. Rebecca taught the children how to make an origami kabuto (samurai helmet) and they also made other origami pieces, as well as learning some Japanese calligraphy.
We thoroughly enjoyed working with the teachers and pupils and were really impressed with everyone’s work.
Rebecca Lee, Acting Head of Education, The Japan Society
It was a pleasure to be able to offer these workshops to the children. They really engaged in all of the activities, and it was amazing to see how quickly and naturally they were able to pick up everything that they learned. I was pleased to see how they all showed such a keen interest in learning about Japan – the day was a great success!
Lucy Hawksley, Education Officer, The Japan Society
We were delighted to host these sessions at the Civic Centre. Young people have a real interest and fascination with Japan and the children were really engaged and enthusiastic throughout the workshops. We are grateful to The Japan Society for coming to Newcastle for the first time to deliver these sessions in person as part of the Festival and to all the schools taking part.
Sarah Edgar, Education Consultant (School Effectiveness), Newcastle City Council
Acknowledgements
- Special thanks to Rebecca Lee and Lucy Hawksley from The Japan Society for working with the Festival organisers to deliver this event in-person and free to North East schools and to Fumika Cartlidge, former Associate Lecturer at Newcastle University, for delivering the Japanese language session
- Thank you to Sarah Edgar (Newcastle City Council) and volunteer Nadine Wilson (Final Year student at Newcastle University, studying Japanese and Spanish) for supporting the event and to staff at Newcastle Civic Centre for welcoming the schools and helping the day run so smoothly
Further information and links
- Fun with Japanese free online taster session and resources for children aged 5-11 is online activity for North East schools available as part of the Festival. Click on the link to register for this activity, which includes language and calligraphy activities.
- More information and free resources are available on The Japan Society website here. These include the 10 lesson Japanese Language and Culture Resource Ready Steady NihonGo! the free online resources for all and free loan resources for schools including calligraphy equipment.
- Follow The Japan Society on X (twitter) / Facebook / Instagram or get in touch by email: education@japansociety.org.uk
- Click here to see other Festival events and activities relating to Japan and Japanese, plus links and resources from The Japan Society and The Japan Foundation to find out how to celebrate Japan and bring Japanese language and culture into the classroom.
The event was supported by:
This project (the Festival) is part-funded by the North East Combined Authority
