My name is Daria Kirbai and I am the lead teacher for Communication, Language and Literacy in FS. For the past three years I have been working as a language acquisition specialist at Bangkok Patana and I am excited to support student language development in Foundation Stage this year.
Welcome to Secondary home language volunteers
This week we have had the pleasure of welcoming seventeen Secondary students to our setting. They will be joining us each week as part of Home Language (HOLA) collaboration between FS and Secondary school. The Secondary volunteers will use their home languages to interact with our young learners. The purpose of this program is to show our children that their language and their culture is valued and has a place at Patana.
The Secondary volunteers will be supporting us in a range of ways. They may create resources that translate key phrases or vocabulary into a child's home language. They will share stories and special cultural events with children from similar and different backgrounds to themselves. They will spend the majority of their time playing and learning alongside FS children using their shared languages. Last Wednesday our HOLA volunteers attended an induction session about safeguarding and ways to work with young students.
This program has been so successful over the last few years. It has really allowed some of our multilingual children to find confidence and a deeper sense of self in the setting. In Foundation Stage we value the language(s) your child speaks with you and your families, and we love having the chance to share that at school.
We have Secondary volunteers with the following languages:
Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Portuguese, Dutch
This is a great start, but we have many more languages in our setting that are not represented. If you are interested in supporting us in your home language, please get in touch with me or your class teacher. We would love to have your expertise!
Have a look at some photos from FS2P:
Have a great weekend,
Miss Daria