By Michelle Crean

Students got stuck into Arabic belly dancing, Irish Sign Language, Russian ballet and Portuguese Capoeira - to celebrate language and culture.

BELLY DANCING: Students in Killarney Community College participated in the #ThinkLanguages day. Exploring the culture and languages associated through belly dancing were: Carla Luis Sofia Gimenez Ava Sheahan and teacher Tara O'Shea. Photo: Marie Carroll-O'Sullivan

The colourful and fun day, to highlight the benefits of foreign language skills, took place last Thursday for Transition Year students in Killarney Community College as they joined with 15,000 other TYs nationally for the #ThinkLanguages workshops.

The school is in the running to be crowned the #ThinkLanguages Champion Team of the year after submitting their very impressive entry. If successful the college will be awarded the trophy as well as live workshops for their students which will run over a full day in the school.

The event included inspirational talks, fun language-filled workshops, and a quiz where the students in the college had the opportunity to compete against schools nationwide in the interactive #ThinkLanguages Quiz.

There was an opening ceremony with inspirational speakers, online language workshops, and a selection of live workshops that were made available for the nationwide event by Languages Connect. The students got to choose from a variety of workshops made available to them through the Languages Connect programme.

The college were given the opportunity to manage their own workshops and invite local speakers and businesses to take part and support their event and showcase the languages that are spoken in the school and used in the community. It gave students a chance to explore how people use different languages in their lives, workplaces and families and most importantly work with local people within the community. The students organised a variety of workshops including CPR training in German and Polish.

Mindfulness in German, Speed Dating in French and Spanish, Portuguese basketball lesson, Tortilla Making, Ukrainian Culture workshop and finished off the day with a slideshow they had prepared on 'Strange Traditions' in other countries.

"It was a wonderful opportunity to work with people within our community and it is evident from the array of live workshops that were available that we are fortunate to be able to celebrate living in such a multi-cultural society," Principal, Stella Loughnane, said.