Page 10 - FIS World JUne 2024

So Cool to Be Multilingual
Continued initiatives foster personalized learning for multilingual students
“Dober dan!” Every morning, Elementary School Principal Dr. Jean-Marie Kahn and her team welcome students at the school entrances with a greeting and a written sign in a chosen “Language of the Week”, in this case, Slovenian. Groups of students gather around her, some are curious, others help her practice the pronunciation. Each week a new language is
chosen, based on special days or celebrations in the countries, or just because students have requested their language. “It is such a good, strong way to connect with the students in the morning,” says Dr. Kahn. “You see their faces light up when it is their language and it leads to really nice conversations.”
What does “multilingual” mean? Who is “multilingual”? At FIS, everyone is multilingual because we are in a community where we hear, learn and speak different languages on a daily basis. It is a myth that one must be proficient in a language to be multilingual. Any language in someone’s life is an addition to their language profile.
The comprehensive impact of multilingualism is visible in the FIS Strategic Plan and reflected in three Strategic Impacts: equity, justice and belonging; language acquisition; and personalized learning. It is also shown in practice, such as in the identity language program in the Middle and Upper School, and the initiatives related to translanguaging: encouraging students to use their home languages in their learning.
The Language of the Week is one of the many inspiring takeaways from a conference on multilingualism that Dr. Kahn and a diverse group of Elementary School teachers representing English Language Acquisition (ELA), German and Learning Support (LS) attended in February. Full of plans and ideas to boost learning and a sense of belonging for the students, the group decided to continue meeting every
two weeks to further develop the approaches concerning multilingualism.
The group is also preparing to inform parents through the Family Partnership Mornings, partly based on the book Bilingual Families by Eowyn Crisfield. As Dr. Kahn says, “It’s helpful to know more about the language profiles and backgrounds of our students as we want to be able to support families in developing realistic language plans and goals.”
The comprehensive impact of multilingualism is visible in the FIS Strategic Plan and reflected in three Strategic Impacts: equity, justice
and belonging; language acquisition; and personalized learning.
Megan Dreher, ELA Middle School teacher at FISW, has developed a “Newcomer hub” to welcome multilingual MS students to our school. It houses a variety of tools to answer important student questions like: what key academic Science vocabulary do I need in English and my home language? How do I navigate Canvas? What is day H? It also gives students the tools they need to build on their vocabulary at home or take
8 FIS World May 2024