International Mother Tongue Day

On Friday 21 February, we celebrated International Mother Tongue Day with this year being the Silver Jubilee Celebration. Since many languages are at risk of disappearing, we dedicated one English lesson in each MYP class to promote and celebrate the mother tongues spoken in each grade. The students were working on different activities. In 6M the students were investigating the Learner Profile Attributes in their mother tongue. They created small posters and connected the attributes to famous people from their countries. In 7M and 7I, we linked the activities to their recent unit on mythology. The students watched a video about a famous myth connected to the creation of languages – the Tower of Babel. Afterwards, the students had to write their own myth about how their languages were created. Finally, 8M and 8I also had activities connected to their recent unit on imaginative fiction. After a short discussion, the students worked in multilingual pairs who had to write a story in which languages have magical powers. Additionally, they had to incorporate their mother tongues in the stories. The school community is invited to celebrate the day with us by emphasizing the importance of learning the mother tongue through speaking, writing, reading and listening outside of school as well.