Our Activities

Language learning activities

Flashcards

Flashcards are a common method for vocabulary teaching. They are one- or two-sided cards, that depict an object or an action while also providing the word of the represented object/action in the target language. Flashcards can be printed or digital.

Pantomime

Pantomime is an enriched gesture activity. Besides gestures, it includes whole-body movements and its goal is to successfully imitate the meaning of an action or an object. Pantomime is a multimodal game, because it combines both visual and kinaesthetic modalities.

Contextual cues

The use of contextual cues in vocabulary teaching involves reading activities, in which students can deduce the meaning of a target word from the surrounding linguistic context. Contextual cues are elements within a text, such as words or phrases, that assist readers in understanding unfamiliar words or expressions. The cues may appear within the same sentence as the difficult or unusual word, or they may be in a previous or a following sentence.

Processing Instruction

Processing instruction is a grammar teaching approach that aims at helping learners establish connections between form and meaning. It consists of three main components:

1. the provision of explicit information about a specific linguistic structure or form,

2. the explanation of learners’ non-optimal strategies, and

3. structured input activities: referential activities, that emphasize the form to make sense of the meaning, and affective activities, that encourage learners to express their feelings or viewpoints about various information related to the target linguistic structures.

Dictogloss

Dictogloss is a language production activity during which learners listen to or read a story while keeping notes and then try, individually or in groups, to reconstruct the story. In the end, they compare their version with the original one.

Running Dictation

In Running Dictation learners are presented with a version of a text that contains gaps. Copies of the complete text are hung on the walls of the classroom. Learners are divided into groups. They first listen to the incomplete text and then have to fill in the gaps in the following way: members of the group run, in rotation, to the hung copies, memorize the target-elements and then come back to their group dictating it. The group that is the first to fill all the gaps of a text correctly wins.

Pedagogical Translanguaging

In Pedagogical TransLanguaging (PTL) the learners’ whole linguistic repertoire is used during instruction, so that systematic comparisons between the learners’ first language (or any language they know) and the target language, at any linguistic level, improve learners’ awareness and eventually facilitate the learning of the target language.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

CLIL refers to the teaching of non-linguistic subjects, such as physics, mathematics, history, through the target language. In such a context, the teaching objective concerns both the learning of the content of the subject and the learning of the target language.

Non Formal education activities

Extracurricular activities

Extracurricular activities targeting music, theatre, story narration, nutrition, recipes, games and sports take place in collaboration with schools, NGOs, local parent associations, Universities, volunteer associations, migrant communities, etc. The activities range from cultural visits and excursions, workshops, nature expeditions, sports games, storytelling and narrations, music or other festivals, theatrical games or plays, and dramatizations, artistic expression activities, like art and crafts, dance. These activities aim at acceptance, inclusion, and integration while promoting cultural awareness, sensitivity and exchange among participants.

Solidarity cafés

Solidarity cafés raise the parents’/caregivers’ awareness and promote their social integration through highlighting the role of education, literacy and multicultural diversity and provide migrants with authentic practice, social interaction, and engagement with native speakers that yield positive outcomes in language acquisition and learner’s motivation. Evidence supporting the effectiveness of similar non-formal language learning environments comes from the experience of the Association for Solidarity Cafés run at the University of Geneva.

RLP and SolidarityNow bring expertise from their involvement in setting up successful Café formats for sustainable life skills and entrepreneurship

Buddy scheme

A "buddy" system is organised for one-to-one language learning, in which local families and/or individuals work together with migrant families/individuals with the aim of practicing language and familiarising with other cultures and languages.

Buddies agree on language targets following guidelines from our team, they meet regularly to learn and hold each other accountable. RLP’s expertise and experience to implement such non-formal activities from the Day One in Europe project and the experience from the Uni-R project at the University of Geneva guarantee their successful implementation.

Cultural Knowledge, Skills & Awareness Activities

In the contemporary world, the integration of migrant children in school settings cannot be reduced solely to their acquisition of the host country’s language. Integration cannot be limited to the expectation that children adapt to the dominant cultural norms of the host society. Studies on intercultural education highlight the importance of engaging with cultural meanings and identities in multiple and nuanced ways. Effective intercultural dialogue requires an openness to learning about diverse cultural experiences through active, mutual engagement. This involves acknowledging cultural differences and recognising children's agency as co-constructors of cultural knowledge.

What do we do?

We develop, conduct, and evaluate cultural sensitivity and awareness workshops that will contribute to an inclusive school culture and prevent discrimination.

How do we do it?

We run cultural knowledge, skills, and awareness workshops within schools, involving migrant and local students, their families, teachers, and intercultural assistants.

Where do we do it?

In formal educational settings.

Concept?

"Train the trainer" method

We run workshops with teachers that cover issues, such as experiences of migration/moving, personal histories of being part of a specific culture, intercultural communication and cultural sensitivity, acculturation strategies, cultural shock, promoting children and young people’s autonomy and rights, equity, diversity and inclusion, or global citizenship. The trained teachers later implement cultural awareness activities in partner countries' affiliated primary and secondary schools

What do we want to achieve?

Change within schools:

towards inclusive education
towards intercultural education
towards open school cultures
towards the facilitation of inclusion processes

Strengthen children and young people’s agency, autonomy and dialogic practices

What does intercultural education involve?

Teachers’ intercultural communication competence, which encompasses:

learning about students’ cultural experience,
building trusting relationships across cultures,
recognising the importance of culturally influenced factors such as communication contexts and styles.

Emphasis on intercultural dialogue as a positive recognition of cultural differences.

What are agency and dialogic practices

Active and fair participation
Perspective taking
Empowerment of expressions
Equal treatment of different perspectives
Opening the floor to diversity in the form of personal trajectories
Personalised production of hybrid identities
Enhancement of children’s authority in accessing and producing knowledge (rights and responsibilities for knowledge)

How will we proceed?

We want to achieve integration of the group as a whole, as opposed to including children from at-risk environments alone.
We want to stop dividing students into two groups (migrant and non-migrant). Instead, we should focus on what each student needs and what they can do. This means shifting our focus from seeing problems as individual issues to understanding them in a broader context — including the laws (macro level), the way schools are organised (meso level), and everyday classroom practices (micro level).