During January 29th – February 2nd 2024, Scotland celebrates the Languages Week. This week is even more exciting for us because we are happy to share our recently published activity pack emerging from the most recent project we conducted in Scotland, Multilingualism through Art. This project is the result of a collaboration with the Scotland’s National Center for Languages and Bilingualism Matters. Key to this project were 12 primary schools in 7 local authorities who engaged in professional development sessions and contributed with their ideas and experiences to the creation of the activity pack.
The resource builds on our previous methodology and takes inspiration from other activities that we have developed as part of our Toolkit. The cards can be used by teachers and language educators working with young learners in primary schools. They can be implemented or adapted to suit each learning context. We hope that, indeed, if you use some of the activities and have feedback to share, you can send us your comments to let us know how you benefited from them or how you have designed your own activities.
The most rewarding aspect in developing this work has been the feedback we received from our young learners. The pupils involved in the project were very excited to share their knowledge of other languages, to develop and express their creative ideas through art-based methods and materials, and to discover so many new things about themselves and their peers as they explored their own language identities and abilities. The teachers were surprised to see how easy and successful some of these activities were, despite their initial concerns regarding their own abilities to engage with art. This encourages us to continue our journey, to further support teachers in other parts of the world to use creative ideas as a means to implement multilingualism as the default route towards strong learning communities.
This project was made possible with the financial support received from the University of Glasgow via the Glasgow Knowledge Exchange Fund.