Celebrating multilingualism - Print version

Maintaining and developing multilingualism

The majority of children all over the world grow up using more than one language. ‘Bilingual’ or ‘multilingual’ mean that a person uses more than one language in their everyday lives. It does not mean that a person has the same skills in all his or her languages.

Advantages

• Using two or more languages gives a child different ways of thinking
• It develops self confidence and confidence in learning
• It increases pride in identity and culture
• A child who uses home language well is more likely to develop good English
• Using home language is important for maintaining family relationships
• It is the easiest way to express emotions
• Many employers look for people who can speak, read and write other languages.

For these reasons, families should be encouraged to develop and maintain their home language. Our bilingualism leaflet [http://www.coventry.gov.uk/downloads/download/8490/multilingualism-leaflet-for-parents] can be distributed to parents and carers to reinforce this message. 

Resources to support multilingualism

Teaching and learning resources

World of Languages, Languages of the World (WOLLOW)

WoLLoW [https://theworldoflanguages.co.uk/]is a fully developed language curriculum for pupils aged between 7 and 15. Created by experienced language teachers and available free to all schools, the project aims to bind together all elements of a pupil’s experience in school and beyond and to prepare pupils not only for future study, but future life.

Why use Wollow?

Suitable for all abilities, and using a range of lively and appealing resources created by teachers, the WoLLoW curriculum addresses the following themes:

• curiosity, exploration and enjoyment – and not only for the pupils
• an understanding of languages and thereby a development of literacy in a wider sense
• communication, sharing, dialogue and oracy
• a regard for all languages, modern, classical, heritage and, in particular, a celebration of multilingualism
• a desire to preserve, value and study familial languages
• an eagerness to study languages into the future
• respect for each other’s history and culture
• a sense of self-awareness and identity for pupils
• a bridge between a pupil’s experience at school and their home life, and a bridge between parents and the school
• an awareness of the relevance of languages not only to all school subjects but also to wider issues, such as migration.

We have made sample files available of the primary topic units entitled 'Multilingual Me' [https://www.coventry.gov.uk/downloads/download/8486/wallow-primary-multilingual-me] and 'A Celebration of Languages' [https://www.coventry.gov.uk/downloads/download/8487/wallow-primary-a-celebration-of-languages], and at secondary level, 'Journey [https://www.coventry.gov.uk/downloads/download/8488/wallow-secondary-journey]', and 'Community'.  [https://www.coventry.gov.uk/jadu/websections/websection_downloads.php?downloadID=8489]

Lost Wor(l)ds

Lost Wor(l)ds [https://www.multilingualism-in-schools.net/] is a website full of activities and ideas to help encourage and facilitate multilingualism. On this site, you will find:

• Activities and resources that actively enable multilingual children to use their languages in formal education contexts, and for non-multilingual children to develop language awareness and utilise any growing understanding of modern foreign languages. Activities range in length from about half an hour to ideas that can take several weeks to implement as part of a scheme of work, and all activities include ideas for home/family communication, and making multilingualism and language awareness visible across the school.
• “Stimulus Activities” – images to be used as starters, in form time, or to take the register, to expose children to fun vocabulary from around the world, enable multilingual children to use their languages, and encourage all children to increase language awareness.
• A blog featuring book reviews, interviews, and highlighted activities – this is very much intended to be a community blog, and we would love to feature your school, and children’s results from working on any of our activities!
• A growing set of academic resources 

Supporting parents

Leaflet for parents to explain the benefits of developing and maintaining home language use in multilingual pupils at home [https://www.coventry.gov.uk/downloads/download/8490/multilingualism-leaflet-for-parents]

Language celebration days, Earlsdon Primary School

Chinese Day

Children at Earlsdon Primary enjoyed a special day celebrating different aspects of Chinese language and culture. We were very lucky to have teachers from The Confucius Institute at Coventry University lead sessions in Kung Fu, paper cutting, calligraphy and Chinese painting.

Year 6 loved their karate taster session led by ATMA Karate. Mora Zhang from Finham Park 2 taught children how to make Chinese knots and use chopsticks. Children also enjoyed learning about Chinese New Year celebrations and the Chinese Zodiac. 

Arabic Day

After being successful in our CREG funding application from Qatar Foundation International [https://www.qfi.org/], we planned Arabic Day to raise awareness of Arabic language and culture across the school. As we have a high percentage of Arabic speakers amongst our growing number of EAL children, Arabic seemed like the perfect language to start with in raising the profile of our multilingual children. 

During the day, children took part in lots of exciting activities. We had an Arabic teacher visit the school to work with each year group to teach them about the Arabic language and culture. The children learnt how to form Arabic letters with playdough, how to write their name using calligraphy and how to say whether they liked or disliked different foods. Arabic-speaking children presented to their class and parents were invited into school to tell Arabic stories and share information on different aspects of Arabic culture. 

The day was a big success, and it was lovely to see children so excited to share their culture and language with their peers. We plan to look at other languages spoken in our school community in the next academic year and make it a regular part of our school agenda.

Michelle Andrews, Foreign Languages Lead, Earlsdon Primary School, 2022

If your school or setting have held a similar multicultural celebration that you would like featured on our website, then please get in touch [mailto:emasteachers@coventry.gov.uk].