We #LoveOurLanguages Campaign

**This is Part 1 of a series! Stay tuned for the next post to continue this work! I would like to personally thank Clara Vaz Bauler for her thoughtful collaboration and insightful feedback in this piece, which helps me (and all of us) move from passive "appreciation" to intentional action in our classroom spaces, so that we can better serve our students, families, and communities! Follow her on Twitter! **

A few years ago, I was wondering about all the ways to invite conversations about how many languages are present in our classrooms. Generally, the EL or Multilingual Learner teacher has stacks of papers that indicate all students' home or heritage languages - but does the rest of the school staff? How about the students?

In a country of anti-immigrant and English-only rhetoric, it is important that we are intentional about honoring students' identities by acknowledging, recognizing, and celebrating their languages. 

Let us begin by having conversations with our students about the beauty of languages within our community. Ask about the languages heard in the grocery store, in their house of faith, on the TV or radio, and what languages are featured on local billboards. Remind students that languages are both seen and/or heard. 

Ask students if they know an additional language other than English. Start to write down a list! After students have shared, ask about their family members, caregivers, or guardians in their homes. What languages do they speak? This can also begin to spark a great conversation about what happens in families when a grandparent or parent is unable to (or discouraged from) passing down a language. We can ask questions like how this happens and why. This can lead to really powerful discussions. 

The magic comes when we proudly and publicly display our classrooms' languages. Print out this template, have students fill in the languages, and display it in the hallway outside of your classroom door. 




Check out this Google Slides presentation that you may wish to use as you have these conversations with your students! As always, feel free to go to FILE & Make a Copy to best suit your needs.



 Check out these printable templates that you may wish to use.  Post your photos on social media using #LoveOurLanguages so you can spread language joy. Show your students the hashtag's photos so they can take a peek at classrooms all over who are proud of their languages! 

Encourage teammates to do the same thing. Walking down the hallway after the first week or two will get students talking about languages they see, hear, and notice! 

**Check out Part 2 in this series!**

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Language Proficiency Tool for Teachers

Image
 One of the most popular posts from my former blog (Innovative EL) was this- so I knew I had to get it back up and available for folks on my new blog!  This tool is based on WIDA performance descriptors. It is meant to serve as a starting place for educators who may not be as familiar with supports and scaffolds for multilingual learners. Each page features one proficiency level (printed twice: so page one has Level 1 at the top and also at the bottom for easy printing). Please note that these are based on general composite scores, and not on language domain scores. Ready to access the tool? Click here!  A deeper look into each individual students' scores (which I absolutely recommend providing to anyone who supports multilingual learners) can be found in the WIDA Name Charts (available on the WIDA website).   These charts are a fantastic resource that I'd recommend printing and giving to each classroom teacher, content teacher, social worker, psychologist, teaching assistant,
Read more

Reflections, Celebrations, & Goals

Image
 It's MAYYYY! This means a lot of different things to students and teachers. As many of us are starting to receive preliminary scores back from annual language assessments, I wanted to share a few templates that you may wish to use with students you serve! For any of these templates, they're all viewable. If you would like to EDIT any, please go to FILE & MAKE A COPY so you can tweak these to meet your needs!  Stems & Frames Goal Settin g: This doc has stems that are tied to Conditions Needed to learn, Goal Setting, and Action Steps. Celebrations & Reflections     This doc has stems for Celebrations, Maintenance, and Reflections Interpretive & Expressive Goals     This doc has stems and frames to set goals for interpretive & expressive language skills. Simple Template by Domain     This doc is a very simple template for a goal by domain. Last Year/This Year Simple Template by Domain     This doc looks like the one above, but it has a space for students to re
Read more

"I Need" Cards: Printables for Newcomers

Image
At the beginning of the school year, I always encourage folks to prep a ton of these in anticipation of newcomer students that will arrive throughout the school year. Please note that this is one example of a template. You can open the templates, go to FILE and MAKE A COPY so that you can customize these to better fit your needs! This sample template I have ready is for English/Spanish newcomers . I Need Cards - please note that this template has the same tool but presented a few different ways. These are a tool that I reference in my proficiency snapshot tool for classoom & content teachers (a scaffold I'd recommend for level 1 students). As students are beginning their language journeys in English, they may just feel comfortable raising their hand and pointing. As they grow in confidence and have had ample time to practice, they may say these sentences out loud. Here's a quick TikTok that walks through these. **I recently (9/10/23) used AI and digital translation resour
Read more