Aims:

The activity promotes: 

• Promoting awareness of languages in the family home, with a focus on changes happening over time
  
• Stimulating interactions which foster understanding about the value and use of family languages, family language practices, and the management of several languages in the family home
  
• Strengthening a sense of pride in home environment and heritage culture/language
  
• Stimulating the use of the several languages present in the families’ lives

How to:

Each group member to make a drawing of themselves and/or their languages

Encouragement of group reflections (see questions formulated above)

Parents in the group will engage with the VLE (in pairs) to make ‘pictures/graphs’ of how they use the languages they know with their family members. When they talk to different family members, which language do they use? Which language do family members respond back in? Which languages does their child use when talking to others in the family?  

Parents in the group will engage with the VLE and fill out information about how they engage with their children at home when doing different activities. (When I read with my child I use ….; when I tell my child a story I use …; when I talk to my child about everyday experiences I use …. etc)

Parents in the group will be invited to contribute to a ‘language dossier’ – a collection of ‘language pieces’ – stories, poems, songs, rhymes, words etc. This should be a process of co-creation, the dossier will not be done separately for each family, but as a group, where all group members and children work together. All languages can be used, so the dossier becomes something multi-lingual. 

Families will also be invited to add pictures relevant to their language experiences, songs, stories they know to the dossier. 

To make this activity more engaging for children, the VLE could present to the children a digital character (e.g. a teddy) who wants to learn about the child’s home environment and the home language/s. Teddy would like to hear about children’s/family’s words, stories, poems etc. 

The activity involves the family sharing with Beeba their experiences and documenting this, to share with the other families in the course (building resources, opportunity for reflection)

The language dossier will be viewed together during a group session, and discussion about the experiences of creating content will be initiated.

Materials and digital tools:

Photos, descriptions and audio/video-recordings could be added to a Forum.