Page 36 - Linguistically Diverse Educational Contexts

LINGUISTICALLY DIVERSE EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS
Example 2
An example presented by A. Susek (2014, p. 21) concerns a project from Switzerland involving pupils aged 4 to 8 years. The aim of the project was to take action to increase parental involvement in their children's education. As part of the project activities, each pupil in turn took home a Sac d'histoire for a few days, which included:
• a bilingual booklet;
• a CD with the same content as the book in several language versions;
• a game thematically linked to the content of the book;
• a surprise, also related to the content of the story;
• a glossary with key words to the story to translate into the language used by the family
members.
The parents' task was to actively accompany the children in reading and playing. The involvement of parents in the project made them feel more appreciated and, above all, more included in the life of the school. As the tasks in the project were given to families once a trimester, additional activities were undertaken to maintain interest in this form of learning, such as:
• a story tree, on which copies of all the book covers of all the books read to the children by their parents were glued;
• performances prepared by pupils, teachers, and parents (in different languages), based on stories from the Sac d'stories.
Example 3
This example concerns the Four Sides of Fairy Tales project carried out in Poland by Martyna Majewska with the support of the US Embassy. The result of the project is a series of recorded animated fairy tales of six national minorities (Senegalese, Georgian, Roma, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and Jewish). Each fairy tale is produced in several languages: the original, Polish, and English. The project brings students closer to ethnic diversity and develops their curiosity about other cultures and languages. The fairy tales are available on YouTube27 and teaching materials for lessons28 with pupils aged 3 to 9 are available on the project website.
The core curriculum in Poland stipulates that in addition to language skills, through language teaching the school should shape attitudes of curiosity, tolerance, and openness towards other cultures. However, should we foster such attitudes only in foreign language classes, where they are often treated superficially? How should we treat cultural issues in foreign language classes? The above- mentioned projects show that developing plurilingual competence does not have to take place exclusively in the foreign language classroom. Multilingual competences are necessary for all people in today's world, not only for migrants.
Summary
27https://www.youtube.com/user/4stronybajek/featured 28https://www.scribd.com/user/187054349/Four-Directions-of-Fairy-Tales-Cztery-Strony-Bajek
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