MTL Fortnight 2023 Engaging Hearts, Equipping Minds

Each July, we kick off Mother Tongue Fortnight with a variety of engaging interesting activities organised for the students at Blangah Rise Primary School. The MTL Fortnight activities provides a platform for students to actively learn and experience their Mother Tongue as ‘a living language’. With the combined efforts from all three language units, a range of activities were organized to create an immersive environment for the learning and appreciation of Mother Tongue Languages this year. Through this learning experience, the students had a fun time immersing themselves in Chinese, Indian and Malay cultures. As part of festivities, Malay students gained a basic understanding of Gamelan as a traditional music artform from Indonesia. They also had the opportunity to listen to how the Gamelan sounds when played as an ensemble and the sounds of individual instruments. During the kompang session, students even got a chance to try out basic kompang rhythms! Hulu plant decoration is a folk art that is still practiced in many parts of China even presently. The Chinese Language students had an opportunity to paint the ‘hulu’ plant and learnt that these sinuous shaped gourds are also delicious as vegetables. To raise awareness and interest in lantern-making, the students also designed and painted Chinese lanterns. In doing so, they learnt the significance and origins of Chinese lanterns. Kurumba tribes inherited a flair for art from their forefathers who captured everyday life as rock paintings. To keep Kurumba art alive, the Tamil students got a chance to draw and paint them. They eventually pasted their artwork on recycled CDs and upcycled them as coasters. The marigold is frequently connected to money, success and luck in Indian culture. In a separate activity, the students got their hands busy making the marigold. Arlo, a Primary 2 student, reflect, “I think that for many of us, the more we learnt about Chinese culture through these Fortnight programme, the more interested we became in both the culture and in learning Mandarin during our day-to-day classes. The hands-on activities such as making the lantern was very interesting”. His schoolmate Rishi, agreed. He added, “I have some friends who were not interested in the Tamil classes because they speak mainly English at home and with their friends, but the Fortnight activities really changed their minds and made them realize that Tamil can be very fun!”. Miss Izza, our Malay Language teacher, said, “The students were very interested in the hand on activities. There was close bonding among the students when they were engaged in cultural activities and they interacted at ease in Malay language with their classmates”. The MTL Fortnight concluded with blazing smiles for our students, as they walked away with a deeper appreciation of the cultures behind their Mother Tongue languages.