“A different language is a different vision of life.” — Federico Fellini.
One of our school’s core values is celebration. Apart from celebrating our students’ achievements, we believe in honouring who we are, and with this thought in our mind, we decided to celebrate International Mother Language Day this year. International Mother Language Day is observed on February 21st to raise awareness of the diversity of languages, cultures and multilingualism worldwide under the theme ‘Multilingual education – a necessity to transform education’.
Collaborating with our school community gave our students a memorable experience.
The day started with our children greeting each other in their mother tongue. They also took pride in dressing in their traditional attire. There were guest readers invited for a read-aloud session. From the Head of the school to our didis who enthusiastically participated in these read-aloud sessions.
A language garden outside the library was a big hit with our students, who enjoyed scribing words in their native tongue. The idea behind having a language garden outside our library was to help our students become more familiar with their mother tongue. A leaf and flower cutout was handed over to them a day before the celebration to encourage them to have a conversation with their parents at home and to learn and write at least one letter/word in their mother tongue.
Bookathon, a book donation drive was also organised, where our students were encouraged to donate books written in their mother tongue to build the library’s language collection. 
A greeting card station was put up in the library, where the students enjoyed designing their greeting cards in languages that they knew. An interactive board helped them understand why International Mother’s Language Day should be celebrated.
The goal of this day was to promote languages and cultures from all over the world. The student’s participation in our school’s celebration reassured us that it is very important for us to be proud of who we are!
Anupa Bhonslay
PYP Teacher Librarian
Oberoi International School
