GIIS Balestier campus celebrated ‘English Week’ for over a week from  24th to 28th April 2017. The event kick-started as GIIS students joined together to decorate their class boards for the event.

The start of “English Week” saw a wide array of engaging activities situated for all levels. The event included interesting activities such as Spell Bee, Pictionary, Story building, unscrambling words into meaningful sentences and Homophones. The students were also introduced to concepts which are unique to the English language like contractions, figures of speech and literary devices.

The highlight of the English Week was the character parade which was held for all classes from 1-6 in the school auditorium with the aim to recognise and make connections with characters we have only read about and exist as fragments of our imagination.

There was an overwhelming response to it and the parade was spectacular. Children were delighted to see their favourite book characters like Harry Potter, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Olivia, Thea Stilton, Oliver Twist, Little Women, Twins of St. Clare’s, Percy Jackson, Mowgli, Tintin come alive on stage. Few students even dressed up as famous authors like J.K Rowling, Enid Blyton and Arundhati Roy and spoke to the audience about their books.

Story building unfolded in the campus as students in different levels were assigned an alphabet and they had to brainstorm and build a vocabulary wall starting with the assigned alphabet and then weave a story using those words. It was a challenge for the students to work with certain alphabets such as Z and X, however, students overcame the challenge and prepared a distinct vocabulary list due to determination and creative thinking. They were also able to weave innovative and creative stories around the list of words they came up with.

The English week helped in enhancing skills like leadership, teamwork, role play, visual arts and Speech and Drama which are inherent to the 9 Gems model, leading to the holistic development of the students.