It was a weeklong immersion into foreign language study and world culture as Bellport Middle School students participated in Foreign Language Week. Each day, students had ample opportunities to attend and participate in language-based activities to hone foreign language skills and to demonstrate appreciation for one another’s cultures. 
At the middle school level, students are required to take two years of foreign language study. French, Italian and Spanish are offered to students in seventh and eighth grade.  
“World language study is an opportunity to heighten and better understand global issues,” Director of ELL, Bilingual and World Language Programs Monica Pullows-Tetuan said.
Students in Gregory Jeffrey’s French 1A and 1B classes learned about New Orleans’ French culture. He played a personally-filmed video about the city and some of its customs and brought to class a king cake. The students also made Mardi Gras masks, which are part of the carnival culture and symbolism.
Italian students in Rose Menikos’ class honed their verb-conjugation skills. After being assigned a verb, each student wrote down on the petal of a construction paper flower an action word’s various forms of voice, mood, tense, number and person, and then decorated the classroom walls with the new blooms. 
In Shannon Rigney’s Spanish B class, the students studied Mexican music and watched the cultural movie ”Under the Same Moon.” Like the other classes, Ms. Rigney’s classes also played international world culture trivia with the game-based digital platform Kahoot and Jeopardy.
At the end of the week, faculty and staff relaxed over buffets of international cuisine representing the student body’s rich and diverse cultures.