Multilingual Moments at TIS

"I would like to sing in my home language!" When the auditions to the Talent Show were announced, many students at TIS rushed to sign up, so they could share their talents with the community. To our pleasant surprise, many students this year chose to perform songs and poems in their home languages. We enjoyed the songs in Russian, Ukrainian,  Korean,  English, and other languages. Students performed with passion and much expression. At the end of the year students had an opportunity to join an activity of their choice. One of them was 'Impromptu Karaoke' when students could select a song of their choice to perform. Once again, many students chose to sing in their home languages. Along with many beautiful performances, we truly enjoyed a Turkish song by one of our grade 5 students, as he explained the meaning of the song to us. It carried a deep philosophical meaning about life. Thank you teachers, parents and all community members for nurturing...

Grade 5 Exhibition is the culminating stage of the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program. Students at TIS researched about their passion projects through leading authentic inquiries and exchanging ideas with peers and members of the community. We are proud that some of the research has been held in students' home languages, which allowed them to dig deeper into their inquiries and consider multiple perspectives on the topic. Besides, some learners challenged themselves by choosing to present their research findings in both English and their home languages, as well as in their third language (e.g : Korean or Hindi speaking students presented in English and Russian). This surely makes our language department very proud and more motivated to continue their support in language acquisition of students at TIS. We were impressed by the multilingual approaches that grade 5 team has taken this year, and we wish them many more successful research and learning in the fut...

In Grade 3 we have been implementing the Tier system in learning the academic vocabulary. Tier 1 represents easier, basic meaning of a word, whereas Tier 2 includes more specific and concrete words. Tier 3 represents more sophisticated, academic vocabulary. (We appreciate the ELL Confianza team for introducing this effective learning approach during their professional training session at TIS) Besides this tiered approach, we have been color coding the languages presented in our class. Every language group selected a color in the beginning of the year, which would represent their language. Students have been using this approach for translanguaging purposes, which allows easier access to content language in English. Often we translate the key vocabulary of the Unit together, and students get fascinated by the difference of how they understood the central idea and the lines of inquiry initially, as opposed to comparing with translated terminology. This allows learners to co...