Research has time and again proved that multilingual children can display strong mathematical skills, conflict resolution skills, and executive function skills. Multilingualism should be practiced in every classroom and a multilingual child should be accepted in every classroom and by including their linguistic practices, we should send a strong message that children all kinds of cultural and linguistic backgrounds should be accommodated in a classroom and contribute to the vibrancy of our early childhood programs.
With the onset of virtual and remote learning, an opportunity is created to help and support multilingual learners. Although, teaching multilingual learners in an online environment is quite a task, one can benefit from shared experiences and interests and create opportunities for students to practice their language skills.
Here are few strategies that teachers can incorporate in their classroom to encourage and stretch the linguistic expertise of multilingual children as well as their participation in learning activities both in person and virtually.
- Incorporate Children’s Home Languages
Multilingual children have a stronghold of their native language and they should be given the space to use their languages for expressing themselves. For example, during a group activity, allow your children to use their native languages to share their knowledge. All multilingual learners, if they are new to English or fluent in it, will gain help from talking with a partner who speaks the same native language. Thinking and sharing in both of their languages solidify their learning.
- Teach Anchor Words
Multilingual learners can reduce anxiety by viewing some foundational concepts about what is being taught. Anchor words are vocabulary words like “farm” or “eat” that initiate the background knowledge of children and provide them a context for learning a new language, which is essential for children who are very new to the English language. You can use some thematic words and teach your multilingual learners.
- Provide Sentence Stems
Sentence stems create a framework for deriving the oral responses of children when they listen to stories or group discussions. The effective language model provided by sentence stems leads children to respond in the form of a complete sentence. Stems also provide scaffolding for children to focus on what they want to say rather than thinking about how to formulate their response. Teach a few stems and use them consistently.
- Incorporate Visuals
English learners who are new to the language can find it difficult to navigate in a sea of languages. Thus they should incorporate visuals to provide comprehension or use realia (concrete objects) if you are teaching virtually so that children can “see” the terms you are using. You can also use new vocabulary words
- Used Layered Questioning
While teaching, how can you be sure that what you are teaching is understood by all, regardless of their stage of language development? This is where a strategy called “layered questioning,” comes to use where the type of questions you ask children are based on the language proficiency of children.
Are you not used to teach in a hybrid classroom full of multilingual learners? If not, you can learn so through some of the teacher training courses and know the ways to support multilingual learners in a classroom.
Written By : Angira Mitra
