Supporting multilingual young children – Workshop for Early Years Professions
In April 2018 Kidsfirst Kindergartens hosted an Early Years Professional Learning Hui in Christchurch, with the theme Rising to the Challenge of Innovation and Diversity. Among the keynote speakers were our Better Start researchers Professor Angus Macfarlane and Associate Professor Sonja Macfarlane.
Leona Harris, MEd, senior research assistant in our Emergent Bilinguals in a Digital World (EBinDW) team led a 90-minute workshop entitled Supporting the language development of linguistically diverse young children. She incorporated findings from our EBinDW research along with the latest research in neuroscience and language development. Over 35 educators attended the workshop and shared their ideas and thoughts around strategies to strengthen relationships and connections with whānau of linguistically diverse young children to support children’s bilingual language development.
Popular strategies included:
displaying multilingual greetings
displaying cultural images/artefacts
welcoming whānau with first language greetings
creating a welcoming whānau space with couches, a coffee table and information for whānau
getting to know about whānau celebrations, activities and communication and language preferences
encouraging whānau to use their child’s first languages in e-portfolios and profile books
asking whānau to translate survival words e.g. “Hello my name is…,” “yes,” “no,” “eat,” “drink,” “hurt,” “rest,” “clean up’” and “your mum will be here soon”
using digital photos for children to share experiences with their whānau in their first language
using digital story makers for children and whānau to add first language audio and text to digital photos
audio recording first language stories and songs using apps e.g., VoiceThread, Puppet Pals, Draw and Tell
Congratulations to Leona and all participants on this very successful workshop.
We would like to thank Kidsfirst Kindergartens for this opportunity to support emergent bilinguals.
