Abstract
The present teaching materials are the result of many years of research on multilingualism by the "One school, many languages” (also known as “SMS”) project team. The materials evolved from a series of workshops carried out by the SMS research team with a total of over 200 classes since 2013, involving over 4000 students across the whole school age range. The material packets described below are the product of this experience, presented for use by teachers.
These are almost 500 pages of material which are divided into 8 thematic sections (or teaching packages) that provide what the Council of Europe defines as "a pluralistic approach to languages and cultures", i.e. activities that simultaneously involve more than one linguistic and cultural variety. The eight packages therefore do not take just a single language or culture into consideration, but aim to ensure that pupils build on and enrich their multilingual and multicultural competence. Here the individual pupil was the particular focus of the content and the skills and competences in focus within each package.
In general, the only prerequisite for carrying out these activities in class is an open and curious attitude towards the lesser-known aspects of the languages that present in our classrooms. Apart from a few specific exceptions, the activities do not require any previous knowledge on the part of either the teacher or the pupil.
For each teaching package, a brief introduction is given to the topic followed by the activity materials, complete with instructions. The symbols, inserted at the top right of the pages, facilitate the use of the materials by the teacher.