We, in India, are uniquely endowed with rich cultural history and plethora of languages. So much variety and such great diversity is a fertile ground for creation of linguistic identities. The language a child learns to speak and listens to at home is the language the child primarily thinks in and is tuned to. What we call the Mother Tongue holds a special place in all of our hearts and minds. But, that's not all. Beyond the sentimental value there lies the rich cultural heritage, stories and generations of wisdom encoded in and spread across so many languages in India. How does one decipher it? Is there a key to these stories?
One the one hand children are excited about stories and on the other hand, children are not easily excited about learning to read, write and figure out grammar in YET another language most of the times. They all have their own comfort zones. What might get them excited about exploring languages and seeing the connections and vibrancy that each of the languages bring to our understanding, our being?
Learning a new language can often be as refreshing as opening a window. Through it, you can enter a new world. Imagine if we were to open not just one, but many windows. Imagine if we could speak, think and feel in not just one, but many languages. Children across grades, at Sparkling Mindz Global School, got a taste of what this way of being might feel like...
Friday, the 21st of February was International Mother Language day. Story-weaver, a platform of Pratham books, had called for individuals and organisations to celebrate this by reading stories in the different mother tongues of India.
We took up this opportunity with a lot of excitement! It seemed like the perfect opportunity to introduce children across grades to the wonder of languages and their exploration. We were excited about reading several stories and since stories are not merely read, they are experienced - one day was not enough! We were going to do an entire WEEK of it. Although, we all know that even a week is just not enough, as one of our students, Samruddha (Falcons, Grade 7), pointed out, "a week is better than a day"
We chose the common mother tongues from South India: Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada, and read the following stories respectively: Ammachi’s Amazing Machines (Tamil), A book for Puchku (Malayalam), Maths at the Mela (Telugu) and Anand (Kannada). The story compilations sent by Pratham were all so interesting and riveting, we wanted to do ALL of them. But, time was short, we HAD to choose.
Every day of the week, one of the facilitators volunteered to read out a story to the children of one house in Telugu and Tamil alternatively. Children were transfixed and we could hear murmurs, laughter, connections from across the floor. One of the truest tests of a story telling or language class is when children spill out of the space and are still trying out new words or speaking to each other in the language. When we saw it happen, our happiness knew no bounds.
The Malayalam story was read by a parent and storyteller, Aswathy during the children's library hours. This was read on two different days to the 6-8 year old classes. The children were amused by the words, framed and used them in their own context and like, the power that only stories can wield - understood the gist of the story based on the narrative by going beyond the barrier of the language. We culminated this incredible week with a story telling session in Kannada by a student from Grade 7.
Across the week, we saw children explore and engage with different languages, at different levels. They connected with the stories, the words and with each other in ways that can only be called inspiring. The values of our school: Deep, Wide and Connected Learning, Empathy, Growth Mindset, were not only reinforced through this journey but also were guides along the way for our children. All the children were curious to learn a new language, used connections from their known language(s) to arrive at meanings, thoroughly enjoying their experience! The stories themselves were amazing in the way they connected a language to a learning area (their subjects) to emotions to larger world issues. It was indeed such a pleasure to find such diverse and rich stories in these languages.
Both the story-tellers as well as the children were equally fascinated with knowing the specific words for technical terms such as screws, pulley, group counting etc., in regional languages. At the same time, we were able to make several connections between words from different languages, like ‘sahayata’, ‘surakshitanga’ and ‘ippo’ among others. Some words caught on for the sheer pleasure of the visual or aural feature it carried: ‘vattam samayam’ has caught on as a phrase for our cherished ‘circle time’, a time and space where children and facilitators come to discuss anything and everything openly in a safe space. And now, children can often be seen counting in various languages or expressing ‘nalla rusi’ during lunch!
Stories are like rainbows - they encapsulate a range of emotions, learnings and cultural as well as universal truths. They engage, entertain, make you wonder and help you learn in so many different ways. Hearing stories in a vast range of languages, especially my own mother tongue, makes me connect to the story very differently. Hearing the story in a language different from what I'm comfortable with stretches my capacity for languages and expands my imagination. Learning languages is an enriching process, it should be seen as a joyous journey by children and NOT a burden to carry on their backs up until the exam.
One the one hand children are excited about stories and on the other hand, children are not easily excited about learning to read, write and figure out grammar in YET another language most of the times. They all have their own comfort zones. What might get them excited about exploring languages and seeing the connections and vibrancy that each of the languages bring to our understanding, our being?
Learning a new language can often be as refreshing as opening a window. Through it, you can enter a new world. Imagine if we were to open not just one, but many windows. Imagine if we could speak, think and feel in not just one, but many languages. Children across grades, at Sparkling Mindz Global School, got a taste of what this way of being might feel like...
Friday, the 21st of February was International Mother Language day. Story-weaver, a platform of Pratham books, had called for individuals and organisations to celebrate this by reading stories in the different mother tongues of India.
We took up this opportunity with a lot of excitement! It seemed like the perfect opportunity to introduce children across grades to the wonder of languages and their exploration. We were excited about reading several stories and since stories are not merely read, they are experienced - one day was not enough! We were going to do an entire WEEK of it. Although, we all know that even a week is just not enough, as one of our students, Samruddha (Falcons, Grade 7), pointed out, "a week is better than a day"
We chose the common mother tongues from South India: Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada, and read the following stories respectively: Ammachi’s Amazing Machines (Tamil), A book for Puchku (Malayalam), Maths at the Mela (Telugu) and Anand (Kannada). The story compilations sent by Pratham were all so interesting and riveting, we wanted to do ALL of them. But, time was short, we HAD to choose.
Every day of the week, one of the facilitators volunteered to read out a story to the children of one house in Telugu and Tamil alternatively. Children were transfixed and we could hear murmurs, laughter, connections from across the floor. One of the truest tests of a story telling or language class is when children spill out of the space and are still trying out new words or speaking to each other in the language. When we saw it happen, our happiness knew no bounds.
The Malayalam story was read by a parent and storyteller, Aswathy during the children's library hours. This was read on two different days to the 6-8 year old classes. The children were amused by the words, framed and used them in their own context and like, the power that only stories can wield - understood the gist of the story based on the narrative by going beyond the barrier of the language. We culminated this incredible week with a story telling session in Kannada by a student from Grade 7.
Across the week, we saw children explore and engage with different languages, at different levels. They connected with the stories, the words and with each other in ways that can only be called inspiring. The values of our school: Deep, Wide and Connected Learning, Empathy, Growth Mindset, were not only reinforced through this journey but also were guides along the way for our children. All the children were curious to learn a new language, used connections from their known language(s) to arrive at meanings, thoroughly enjoying their experience! The stories themselves were amazing in the way they connected a language to a learning area (their subjects) to emotions to larger world issues. It was indeed such a pleasure to find such diverse and rich stories in these languages.
Both the story-tellers as well as the children were equally fascinated with knowing the specific words for technical terms such as screws, pulley, group counting etc., in regional languages. At the same time, we were able to make several connections between words from different languages, like ‘sahayata’, ‘surakshitanga’ and ‘ippo’ among others. Some words caught on for the sheer pleasure of the visual or aural feature it carried: ‘vattam samayam’ has caught on as a phrase for our cherished ‘circle time’, a time and space where children and facilitators come to discuss anything and everything openly in a safe space. And now, children can often be seen counting in various languages or expressing ‘nalla rusi’ during lunch!
Stories are like rainbows - they encapsulate a range of emotions, learnings and cultural as well as universal truths. They engage, entertain, make you wonder and help you learn in so many different ways. Hearing stories in a vast range of languages, especially my own mother tongue, makes me connect to the story very differently. Hearing the story in a language different from what I'm comfortable with stretches my capacity for languages and expands my imagination. Learning languages is an enriching process, it should be seen as a joyous journey by children and NOT a burden to carry on their backs up until the exam.
Story-telling sessions. From left to right: Aswathy in Malayalam, Sriram in Telegu and Disha in Tamil
Towards the end of the week, we conducted a panel discussion on the ‘joy of reading in your mother tongue’. The discussion brought out various aspects, including the joy of learning new languages, the nostalgia and joy associated with mother tongues, how learning different languages opens up ways to think and feel differently, to take perspective and to enable empathy towards people who may be different from us, culturally and linguistically.
After the panel discussion on the ‘Joy of reading in our mother tongue'
We are so glad that we chose to participate in this initiative. As a language facilitator, I can say that this week is how we envisage language learning… in fact, any engagement with language to pan out: enriching, deep, connected, meaningful! This week was hopefully just the beginning to what is much more than just the joy of reading stories in our mother tongue!
Now to the best part, the reflections from students:
Contributed by Poorva Agarwal, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global School.
Now to the best part, the reflections from students:
- “It was a really nice experience reading stories in our mother tongue. We found different connections between languages and I didn’t expect to learn so many new words in different languages! We loved how the stories were connected to the things we actually use in our day to day lives, like - counting, grouping, the love of reading books and a garbage collector… “ - Mahathi, Sphinx House
- “We had a story-telling session in Tamil and in that process we also learned the names of simple machines! Children really enjoyed figuring out the connections between tamil and their own mother tongues. It helped us look back at languages we have forgotten and realising how many forgotten languages India has.” - Neha, Pheonix House
- “As the story began, the students raised their hands - some of them to guess words, some of them to make connections, some of them to share and some of them to listen… we listened to a story in Telegu - a language known to some and unknown to others. But none of us was hesitant. This was an experience we have never had before and we realised that we are not using our mother tongue anymore. We realised how much fun languages can be and how much they carry. By the end of the week, we had taken away a few new words, a nostalgic experience and most importantly, the inspiration to learn and explore more mother languages…” - Meenakshi, Pegasus House
- “All the students were engaged trying to figure out the meaning of the words by decoding them as well as making connections to their own mother tongues. And that feeling was such a joyous one that you could see it on their faces! We took away a few learnings from this week - how words have an origin and one can see similarities between certain languages because of common roots, how learning a new language makes you think differently… We are now trying our best to incorporate the words and languages in our daily lives…” - Maya, Griffins House
Contributed by Poorva Agarwal, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global School.
RSS Feed