Nursery World - Big sister

Bilingual assistant Mina Yusuf spells out her typical week helping nursery and school children in their mother tongue Monday

Monday

The vast majority of children in the early years centre at Greenfield Primary School in Hyde, Cheshire, where I work, originate from the district of Sylhet in Bangladesh. Their native language is Bengali and they speak the Sylheti dialect. Most of their parents don't speak English so I'm needed to help the children interact with the staff.

My daily routine is not always the same - today I am working in the reception class. I help greet the children and afterwards we take them to the hall for assembly. Following assembly, the reception children have PE and at 10.30am I'm on playtime duty followed by bilingual literacy lessons with the class teacher. When I teach the children, I mainly use their mother tongue with some extracts in English. This helps them to learn both languages.

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