Blog

School and Family Together

 We are working with a lot of organisations, sharing our experiences and looking for ways we can work together to support Ethnic Minority families become part of their school communities. Martha from SOFT has kindly written us a guest blog about the work that they are doing to help immigrant families

 SOFT

The SOFT project aims to foster the linguistic and social integration of migrant children through shared language learning activities that involve teachers, families and children.

SOFT- is a language project funded by the European Union EACEA/Lifelong Learning Programme and involves several countries (Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Scotland and Italy). There are currently 6 schools and nurseries taking part in Edinburgh, involving 576 children and 29 teachers. The schools involved in our city are: Fort Early Learning Centre, St Mary’s RC Primary, Castleview, Niddrie Mill, St David’s and Tollcross Primaries.

The Language activities are based on the Narrative Format approach of language learning, also known as the “Hocus & Lotus” method used previously in several EU projects. Children learn languages through telling stories, whilst acting them out, singing or drawing. The most important aim of this project is to raise awareness of the advantages of early language learning in benefiting cognitive and literacy development, and it is also a fun activity to do in the class with friends and feel valued. This fosters positive attitudes towards intercultural communication and multilingualism, facilitates the use of cooperative and collaborative learning practices in class and enhances home-school relationships.

For more information visit their website http://www.softintegration.eu/index.php/en/soft-project or http://www.bilingualism-matters.ppls.ed.ac.uk/projects/soft-2/

Comments

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *