Supporting Multilingual Classrooms: ECML national training workshop (6 – 7 June 2024, Belgrade, Serbia)
Local organiser: Milena Kostić & Tamara Đorđević, Foundation Tempus
ECML experts: Terry Lamb, Brigitte Gerber
Participants: 17 (teacher educators, mentors, teachers organising professional development activities, school leaders)
The workshop organised on 6 and 7 June 2024 in Belgrade brought together teacher educators, mentors, teachers organising professional development activities and school leaders from primary, secondary and tertiary education institutions across Serbia.
The workshop offered sessions involving individual and group work. The participants learnt about valuing plurilingual identities and attitudes towards diversity in the classroom, developing competences to support the learning of other languages in the classroom, how to support multilingualism across the curriculum and in the whole school. The importance of cooperation at the school level was emphasised with the aim of raising awareness of multilingualism and interculturality. The participants could apply the insights and knowledge they gained while creating joint projects.
The participants found it particularly useful that they could observe how students feel in the classrooms where they neither speak nor understand (well) the language of schooling and to reflect on and discuss the ways of integrating them. During the workshop, the moderators presented the activities in which – in addition to teachers – peers, parents and the wider community could also participate, as they are important in the process of welcoming foreign students and introducing them to the new language and culture.
Milena Kostić and Tamara Đorđević, local organisers, 18 June 2024
