LANGUAGES

As a beautifully multicultural community, our students bring with them a vast array of languages and multilingual experiences. ISB has dedicated professional learning sessions throughout the year to develop our capacity as educators to empower our students to use all of their languages to strengthen their learning through the development of a culture of translanguaging.

What does translanguaging look like in the classroom? It looks like chemistry students taking notes in both English and Thai and like middle school students leading learning conferences in their home languages. It looks like high school students self-selecting a group with other Japanese speakers, talking about the concepts being studied in English class, then inviting a new Japanese student to join their conversation.

ISB’s Middle and High School native language classes support students in maintaining their native languages by offering rigorous classes where language learning is tied to meaningful units such as relationships (friendship), human ingenuity, sharing the planet, and human rights. Students extended their learning by presenting to different audiences on critical topics such as wellness, environmental issues, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Our students also submitted articles that were published in their home countries. The connection between our students’ language learning and their learning across all content areas is evident.

Our elementary school students develop solid foundations in additional languages (Mandarin, Spanish, Thai) through units like healthy lifestyles, family, and Thai culture. The Elementary School language department has been aligning content and evaluating the program to prioritize content while creating a clear learning pathway. A significant effort this year was the pilot program to include students receiving English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and Tier 3 learning support in language classes. This pilot has received positive results, and the team will be looking at ways to extend this throughout the Elementary School.

In 2021-22, the Panther Native Language Academy (PNLA) continued to offer after-school classes for students who were either unable to take a native language class during school or who needed extra support as determined by the teacher of the native language class in school. Classes were offered in eight languages to 78 students in semester one and nine languages to 100 students in semester two. Classes went from virtual to hybrid to in-person over the course of the year. The PNLA remained parent-paid, with ISB sponsoring a second class per week when there was sufficient demand/availability. Celebrations such as the International Day of Multilingualism (March 27) and the Dutch Koningsdag (April 27) marked our return to in-person PNLA in the second semester.

Other highlights from this year’s language classes included French and Spanish students doing a TEDx talk on wellbeing in their target language with parents as the audience in our Chevron Theater. While Japanese language students learned the structural and linguistic features of an expository letter, they then wrote and sent a “Letter to the Editor” of a Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, one of the premier newspapers in Japan. The paper published one of our students’ articles in November 2021. The article’s theme is “taking good care of things in the way you treat the thing as your friend” to improve and raise environmental awareness. And middle school students discussed, in Korean, the 20th presidential election held in Korea this year, developing their ability to make logical arguments in a fun way.

The ultimate goal of language learning is to support students in becoming effective communicators in either their native language or an additional language. The learning is carefully designed by teachers who look at standards, including the ISB English Language Arts Standards, ONESQA, and ACTFL. Our teachers create learning activities that give our students opportunities to transfer and apply real-world skills and tie them to deepening their understanding of important issues and cultures.