Introduction
Reflecting your school community's linguistic history, identity and dreams creates a sense of belonging, inspiration and critical language awareness. This creative school intervention is designed to bring visibility to the multilingual identities of students in your school. It can be adapted to elementary, middle and high schools and be used as springboard for learning about concepts such as community, worldview, and globalization.
Guiding Question
How does our multilingual community reflect our connections to the world?
Materials and Resources
- Bulletin board
- Bulletin board pins
- Three different colours of string
- Paper strips
- Twist ties to attach paper strips to string
Connect & Create
Pick a bulletin board in the school and pin a large world map on it. Give students three colours of string representing the following:
- Red Languages spoken by my family in the past
- Blue Languages I speak
- Green Languages I desire to speak
Ask them to pin lines of string from the location/s these languages come from to the city they currently live in (ex. If the student’s grandfather speaks Punjabi and lived in Amritsar, use a red string to pin a line between Amritsar and Calgary; if the same student is in French Immersion and learning the language from a teacher from Chicoutimi, then they can draw a line in blue from Chicoutimi to Calgary. To add an extra level of personalization to this creative intervention, students can attach a favourite word (ex. ਸੁੰਦਰ ) or phrase (ex. C'est la vie) to the string that corresponds to the language. When all students have completed this linguistic mapping task, they will have a complex, colourful representation of their school community’s linguistic histories, identities and dreams
Discuss
This creative intervention can be used as a prompt to explore curricular outcomes such as language arts and social studies. As a springboard of further inquiry, invite your students to discuss the following:
Reflecting on our map, how does our multilingual community reflect our connections to the world?
More prompts for deep thinking and rich discussion:
- My language pathways show that I am from... but also...
- When I look at the language patterns on the map, I notice ...
- I think this map shows… about our community.
- How is worldview reflected through the languages we speak?
- How does this map reflect how are community is part of globalization?
- I wonder why/how …