The hard work pupils with English as an Additional Language (EAL) across Renfrewshire put into their entries for the national Mother Tongue Other Tongue competition run by the Scotland’s National Centre for Languages (SCILT) has not gone unnoticed, especially a successful group of pupils at West Primary whose entries were selected for the finals.

The Mother Tongue Other Tongue multilingual poetry competition celebrates linguistic and cultural diversity through creative writing, and showcases the many languages spoken and learned by young people in school and at home.

The poems written by Sabihah, Sabina and Tanazzal – the three pupils whose work made the finals – will be published online by SCILT.  They celebrate the pupils’ experiences of living in Brazil, of a mum (“the best chef in the world!”) cooking Biryani, to experiences seeing goats in the countryside of Pakistan.  The poems created by pupils across the school were written in a number of languages, ranging from Arabic to Yoruba, and were used by the school to help teach their classmates about the variety of cultures within the school.

The hard work and success of the pupils even made the local newspaper with also features some words from our very own EAL Teacher Ruth Cunningham who worked with the pupils and staff at West Primary on the project featuring!

To read the article, ‘Paisley primary celebrates different pupils’ cultures as part of poetry project’ visit the Daily Record website.

E-Portfolio tag: Language and Literacy