Students’ Assembly: Creating Our Manifesto for Europe’s Languages
#EuropeanDayOfLanguages
Year 4 students took part in the Languages Unite Citizens Assembly. The first session, as already explained in this blog, began with a question for debate:
If English already connects many Europeans, why should schools protect and promote other spoken and signed languages?
Each member of the group received a card containing different information about the role of English, regional and minority languages, cultural identity, motivation for language learning, sign languages and the impact of new technologies.
After reading their cards individually, the students had to mediate the information for their classmates. They were not allowed simply to read the text aloud: they had to identify the key ideas, reformulate them in their own words and explain them clearly so that everyone in the group could understand and contribute.
Both Literacy teachers were genuinely amazed by the outstanding mediation work carried out by their students. The students were able to select essential information from relatively complex texts, explain it accurately in accessible English, answer their classmates’ questions and connect ideas from different sources. Their performance showed not only a strong command of English, but also careful listening, cooperation and a real awareness of their responsibility as mediators within the group.
Using the evidence they had shared, the groups discussed different language-policy options and wrote a four-point school manifesto to protect and promote linguistic diversity.
The activity concluded with the presentation of the manifestos and a final reflection on the relationship between languages, inclusion, democracy and active citizenship.
Comments
Post a Comment
Thanks for your comment!