Mother Tongue / Other Tongue

Free CPD session for teachers & launch of the Mother Tongue / Other Tongue multi-lingual poetry competition, Monday 19th March, 5:30-8pm, MMU Geoffrey Manton Building

Photo from freedom-in-education.co.uk

Teachers, friends of teachers and those who have ever seen a teacher, join us for a glass of wine and refreshments and enjoy a special performance by children from the Huaxia Chinese School and a panel discussion about why it is important to celebrate other languages and other cultures. This informal introduction to the competition will be followed by a CPD session led by writer, Mandy Coe, who will inspire you with ideas and resources that you can take straight back into your classrooms (or to a teacher who has a classroom). Publicity materials to help promote the competition in schools will be available on the night and you will also be able to sign up for free workshops that will be offered to schools taking part in the competition. This will run in schools throughout April and May. 

There is no charge for this event and everyone is welcome. It would help with catering if you could rsvp in advance to this email address; mtot@mmu.ac.uk. If you are interested in running the project in your school but cannot make the session on March 19^th, please email your details anyway and we will send publicity materials and make sure you receive links to the website where resources will be made available after March 19^th. 

COMPETITION DETAILS

The Mother Tongue/Other Tongue poetry competition aims to celebrate the multitude of languages and cultures that make up the North West of England. Young people between the ages of 12 and 18 whose first language isn’t English, are invited to send in a remembered poem or song written in their Mother Tongue and tell us why it’s important to them or what they like about it. Young people studying an 'Other Tongue' at school are invited to use the language that they are studying creatively by writing a poem using their new tongue. 

The competition deadline is Monday 28^th May and is FREE to enter.  Winning young writers will be presented with prizes by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy at a Manchester Children’s Book Festival event in June. Posters of the winning pieces will be displayed at the festival and they will also be performed as part of it. 

The project is a HLSS Faculty project that brings together Manchester Writing School writers and Routes into Languages language specialists.  Workshops led by MMU students will be offered free to participating schools. 

Hope to see you there.