Linguistically Responsive: Students are empowered when they have a sense of belonging and their language and culture is acknowledged and respected by their teacher and classmates.
| Actions | |
|---|---|
| Acknowledge the power of a name; get it right |
Take the time to learn how to pronounce names correctly. Privately, on the first day, ask them to say their name. Listen carefully and repeat it until you know it. Model the correct pronunciation of names to the class so that all students can say the correct pronunciation. |
| Allow students to speak in their first language |
Students do not learn by force. If you “enforce” an English-only rule in the classroom, it will likely create a divide and a form of resistance from struggling multilingual learners. Instead, allow them to speak a language of their choice. Go over to them and find out if they have any questions or need clarification on instructions. |
| Ensure materials reflect all students |
Conduct an audit of classroom posters, visuals, texts, and videos to ensure that all cultures are represented, both visually and orally. Seek out texts and posters that reflect the culture of your students. It’s important that students see reflections of themselves. |
| Ensure communication is clear to families |
Work with your school to ensure that visual materials are translated. It’s important that signs, posters, texts/emails/letters from the teacher and from the school are translated. Ensure that verbal communication isn’t prohibited by language. Advocate for translators and ensure that siblings aren’t responsible for translating. |
Environments Optimized for Language Acquisition: Our students can’t be successful in learning a new language when the environment is not intentionally designed to optimize language acquisition.
| Creating Environments Optimized for Language Acquisition | |
|---|---|
| Have a whole class conversation about how to support your students learning English |
Depending on your numbers, you might have just a few students who are in the emergent stages of languages. Sometimes this can sound funny to English speaking kids when they hear words switched around in the sentence or misconjugated. It’s important to have a conversation with your class about the importance of supporting the students who are learning English. Many language learners report that they didn’t speak up in class for fear that other kids would laugh at them. You can even make a chart, “Ways we can support our friends learning English: For example, don’t laugh when they make an error.” |
| Assign a Peer Partner (allow for choice if possible) |
Identify a classmate who can offer support as a peer. Often, having a peer that speaks the native language can be very supportive for a student in the beginning stages of language acquisition.When possible, allow the students to have a choice in their “buddy.” If they are able to choose someone that they are comfortable with, this will be more effective. |
| Minimize group corrections to spoken English | Students learning English must be very brave to speak in front of the classroom. You can encourage students who are in the emergent stage of language acquisition to speak up by not correcting their English in front of the group. Corrections will come, but be mindful of the impact on confidence...especially in the first weeks/months of school as you are building trust with your students. |
| Don’t force students to speak |
It is essential that you don’t force your students into speaking before they are ready. This is not developmentally appropriate; listening comprehension will develop in advance of speaking. If your student is going through a silent period, never insist that they speak or have the entire class wait until they speak. Instead, see if they are able to point to the answer, get support from a friend, or communicate to the teacher/peer in the native language. |
| Make the schedule visual with pictures |
Even if multilingual learners do not yet understand all of the words that you speak, it is possible for them to understand the structure of each day. For our students, they feel comforted when they see their basic needs being met. Having pictures of things like “lunch,” “bathroom break,” and “going home” will comfort your students. For young children, it’s a long school day (especially when you are trying to learn a new language all day!). It’s comforting for students to see that breaks are coming and that they will indeed go home at some point! |
| Increase “comprehensibility” of speech. | Insert pauses between sentences and ideas. Punch key words to support meaning. Speak slowly—be careful to not over exaggerate slowness at the cost of meaning. Limit the use of contractions and fused forms (ex: gonna, wanna). Use repetition/paraphrase. Keep sentences short. Use high-frequency words. Limit the use of idioms, slang. |