LOL Librarian

" “Mother Tongue language” isn’t about a day in a year, it’s about a lifetime of language.  " - Eowyn Crisfield As a part of our United Nations Week, I began a read-aloud program inviting parents to read aloud in their mother tongue to our student. This is my third year running the program which I do twice a year, once during UN Week and again during our Book Week.  Being an educator and having a love of teaching reading, I know the value of maintaining a students mother tongue. It is the foundation for a child's literacy learning journey. The structure is fairly casual and simple, students are invited to listen to a story read by a parent during their recess. Teachers are sent a schedule of which languages will be featured during morning and afternoon recess, and they share it with their students.  I used a google form to invite parents to read about 2 weeks before the event and then a week before I set up a schedule, send confirmation emails and ensure there's ...

In honour of the UN's International Day of Peace  our English as an Additional Language team helped our students to create a great Museum of Culture.  The students discussed aspects of their country and culture and many brought in items from their home to share and display. As a librarian, I helped by getting some books and the books aren't limited to books about countries or maps, there are cookbooks, craft books, fairy tales and celebrations. It was a great way for students to really delve into 'Who We Are' and to feel pride about where they are from. Well done AISB!

Children love picture books, and this is not surprising but what may be surprising is their fondness for books that are in different languages. We discovered that children were interested in checking out books that weren't in English or their mother tongue. They happily sat and made up stories of their own and pointed out other features of text like sentence length, word endings or how the words looked.  Dual language books are a wonderful thing, and in an international school it helps children to learn about another language and their culture, thereby creating tolerance. There are some really interesting blogs and articles about the power of dual language books. I wish there were more available, somebody should be making a fortune of translating favourites into dual language tales.