In all schools, but especially those without Mother Tongue teachers, parents have to be used as a resource and welcomed into the classroom if we are to truly embrace a culture promoting multilingualism.
There are many examples of how this is already happening in our Primary School:
- Parents in K2 took turns to share nursery rhymes from around the world with the children in the classroom as part of their Nursery Rhyme curriculum.
- Parents in K1 helped their children to find toys typical from around the world to create a central display.
- Parents in Y1 and Y3 came in to share stories in different languages as part of a story topic.
- Parents in Y3 came in to run a Golden Time activity based on fun activities from around the world.
These are small steps along a path of greater involvement.
Our next step is finding parents willing to become Parent Language representatives for the school. The first job for the representative is to host a Language Coffee Morning organised by the school to bring together families with the same language. From here we hope to get a contact list of interested families and find ways the families can help each other and work with the school to support their children in maintaining their Home Languages. We have our first two coffee mornings coming up next week…
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