| Living Language Institute Foundation |  |
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The More We Get Together, The Happier We’ll Be
Report of the Co-Lingual Song Game Development Project
to the United Way of the Lower Mainland: Community Innovations
Goals of the Project
* This project set out to reach immigrant families and to build community through co-lingual song games that acknowledge, in addition to English, their native languages as contribution to the rich language diversity of modern day Vancouver.
* This project intended to provide a critical 'training the trainer' component throughout the project through the use of facilitators from each of the language groups. The facilitators were drawn from four language communities and became leaders and advocates for the methodology with families. The project’s goal of training facilitators in community development through the song games in different languages became a primary outcome of the project.
* This project intended to provide a program of song games that engaged parents in interactive play with their children using Singing English as the template and also using song games from their own primary language group. This approach provided parents with a structure for play with their children to support children's development in their mother tongue and in English.
* This project used the underlying Sound to Symbol Methodology (developed by Dr. Fleurette Sweeney) as an important method for developing oral language skills in the context of social play and for practicing important sensory motor integration activities that arise in the context of the game play. Developing community through social play is another outcome of the Sound to Symbol approach
What we learned
We tapped into something very significant for immigrant families. From the reactions of both the facilitators that we trained and the parents and grandparents involved , we discovered that they really valued the opportunity to interact with people from other linguistic groups in an environment of mutual respect. Many of them have struggled to learn English and adapt to the dominant culture. It was refreshing for them to be in an environment in which their culture was being brought forward along with English as being legitimate. This co-lingual learning environment is very different than the more typical ESL or multicultural approaches which still involve adaptation to the dominant culture.
Co-lingual learning is a new way of approaching and interacting with and between families from different cultures. It differs from existing bilingual, multilingual ESL dominant literacy models. Our work in creating co-lingual and co-culture community spaces is experiential, experimental and transformative.
We learned that families from different linguistic groups are thrilled and excited to have a forum where they and their children can learn and play together. This does not happen quickly or easily. A safe space must be co-created by engaging families in the process. The song games became the “glue” that allowed intergenerational play as well as play among people who may not have shared any language even English.
We learned that the song games can provide a vehicle for generating community through social interactions across cultural and language differences. This project taught us how multiple cultures can come together in co-lingual participatory praxis.
What We Developed
Song Game cards were developed for songs in English Tagalog, Mandarin, Japanese And Spanish.
The Methodology
The Sound to Symbol Methodology has been developed over the past 30 years. It has grown from work in education through music and has been expanded to include application in literacy and orality. It is an important method for developing oral language skills in the context of social play and for practicing important sensory motor integration activities that arise in the context of the game play.
The songs are structured for cooperative social interaction and are based on simple movements and gestures that engage attention and provide both sequencing and patterns of social interaction carried by the song’s architecture. Many of the song actions were developed based on the work of the late Dr. Jean Ayers, an occupational therapist who pioneered activities for children in sensory motor integration.
To receive a copy of the report, please email LivingLanguage@shaw.ca
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