Language in Focus - Let’s Celebrate the Culture and Language of the Philippines

Kumasta! BIS encourages us to be global citizens learning together, and we love finding out about the rich variety of cultures in our world. Language in Focus is a cross-campus initiative at Primary to celebrate the home languages and cultures of our students and staff. This half term our Language in Focus is Filipino (Tagalog), and we have been doing lots of activities to learn more about this fascinating language and culture.

At the Junior campus, our new language was launched in style with a colourful assembly starring our Filipino ambassadors in Years 3, 4 and 5. As well as presenting the video they had made, the five Filipino-speaking students taught us Filipino greetings and numbers, then they took part in the traditional children’s game of ‘Tumbang Preso’ in front of the entire Junior campus! It certainly became competitive between our student and teacher teams as they aimed to knock down the most cans by throwing flip flops. Additionally, our Filipino staff, Mr. Lamech and Nurse Shen, loved sharing their favourite memories and facts about their home country, and our students have enjoyed interacting with the eye-catching display board near the canteen. Students and teachers practise greeting each other in Filipino every morning and some teachers are even taking the daily register in Filipino!

Filipino will continue to be celebrated in our classrooms until after the Tet holiday, at which time a new language will be selected. If your family have a connection to the Philippines and you would like to share a story, song, game, photo, etc. please let your child’s class teacher or EAL teacher know.

To continue learning at home, please visit our Language in Focus blog where you will find phrases, facts, videos and more. You will also be able to see all of our recent activities, videos and information on previous languages we have celebrated at BIS.

Paalam!

https://bislanguageinfocus.blogspot.com/p/filipino.html

Mr John Lee, Ms Rachel Pelham & Ms Erica Barthorpe, EAL Department