Multilingual Moments at TIS

World Read Aloud Day (February 2, 2022)  By Nargiza Azizova On World Read Aloud Day students enjoyed reading in their home languages. Students expressed positive feelings and much enthusiasm about reading in their home languages. Some of them noted that they feel free, relaxed when they read in their home languages, because they understand the text well. They also shared their connections to their home cultures and identities when reading in their home languages. Students were eager to explained and share the specifics of their home languages (the alphabet, some cognate words with English, as well as descriptions of illustrations in the books and how they connect to the book content).  Some students enjoyed reading bilingual books as well. They said they feel proud to be able to speak more than one language.  Here are some videos and photos of students’ multilingual read aloud sessions.  Mironshoh and Amirbek reading an informative book in Russian Ellie and Seoyeon e...

World Read Aloud Day at TIS - Elementary School (Published by Nargiza Azizova - Grade 3 Homeroom Teacher) On February 2-4, 2022 TIS community celebrated the World Read Aloud Day. Elementary school students enjoyed the Online Author Visits organized by our school librarian Ms.Sayyora Tairova. Grade 3 students enjoyed read aloud sessions by award winning international authors such as Laurie Ann Thompson, Dee Romito, and Mindy Yuksel.  The authors read some of their books to students, and answered many of the students’ questions related to the writing process and reading in general.  The authors talked about the many years of research, which often includes learning about the culture and native languages of the countries they focus on in their books. For example, the book Emmanuel's Dream  is based on a true story of a boy from Accra, Ghana. The author Laurie Ann Thompson spent over five years learning about Ghana while writing Emmanuel's story. This is impressive! Author Dee...

 Grade 3 students have been enjoying our After School Activity - Multilingual Karaoke. Students select a song in their home language. Then they sing it and share the meaning of the song with the activity members. We try to learn some verses from the song and sing along. Students spot the cognates and notice the differences and similarities of different languages. Chinese song by Sissi  Russian song by Michael Korean song by Seungjun Hindi song by Nirvi Group performance of the song Believer

International Mother Languages Day 2020 By Nargiza.A On this day teachers and parents of TIS came together to celebrate the language diversity within our community, and students participated in interactive activities organized for them. We started the morning by multilingual read aloud sessions in elementary school, and students enjoyed listening to stories both in their home languages and foreign languages.  In the afternoon grades 2-5 actively participated at the Assembly dedicated to languages of the world and gained more understanding of why we celebrate IMLD.  Later in the afternoon students in the Early Learning Center had a special session ‘Drop Everything and Read’ during which they enjoyed reading books in their home languages. Thank you for supporting multilingualism at TIS!

Cognitive Load with Layers of Multilingual Complexity By Shawn Perry Following our PD session which we unpacked about Cognitive Load, I thought it would be a great investigative activity for Grade 3 students to do from a time-keeping  point of view  (for our current UOI) , and as a math activity.  We used the color-coded words on the white board and had the students try to process and read them as quickly as they could.   Without giving students a lot of instruction, I asked them to read the words, and they took turns reading them. Naturally, they read the words not the color.  Most students read a single row of words in about 2 seconds . We extrapolated that it would take about 12 seconds to read all 6 rows, if they kept reading at the same pace.   For the next step the students were asked to “read the colors”.   The students were surprised that they took quite a bit longer to read the same row.  The average was about 6...

"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...