Celebrating International Mother Language Day all Month

International Mother Language Day celebrations have been incorporated into the Language and Literature Festival at AIS in 2021. This allows students to celebrate their home and identity languages for the entire month of February! 

During Library class, Grade 3 heard a story about the Lunar New Year told in Chinese, while Grades 1 and 2 heard a classic story told in Catalan. 

According to school librarian Ijanaya Jacob-Brown, “Diversity is paramount in the library. Students enjoy a book read to them in a different language or from a different culture. Even if the book is not in their mother tongue, students can enjoy looking at the pictures, listening to the expressive reading and immersing themselves in a different culture.” 

This year, Grade 9 created videos celebrating a significant story in their language to share with students from Starter Class to Grade 9.

Kerrilyn Thacker, Mother Tongue Coordinator at AIS, explains, “For the past month, Grade 9 students have been thinking about the ways stories are told in their culture and languages. They have overcome many challenges in the past few weeks to create videos that celebrate a home language and an important story in their culture.” 

In their videos, the Grade 9 students included a story and then instructions for a simple activity that encourages students to think about the story and also use their own home language/s. Grade 9 stories are told in Japanese, Gujarati, Dutch, Portuguese, German, Welsh, Hindi and several other languages. 

International Mother Language Day was celebrated globally on 21 February.