3C) Culturally relevant materials
Display and provide culturally relevant materials, including family pictures and cultural items from children’s homes. Include families in helping to select books, objects, and materials to display in the classrooms.
Toolkit: Funds of Knowledge
This toolkit helps teachers adapt an asset-based lens and identify the knowledge that students and families bring into a school community, and how to leverage that knowledge for learning.Read More
Toolkit: Welcoming and Affirming Community
This link connects teachers to multiple resource toolkits across multiple grade bands. Topics include Social Emotional Learning, Family Partnerships, and Caring Communities.Read More
Video: Supportive Emotional Climate for Relationships
This video highlights the importance of language to make Multilingual Learners feel comfortable; if they hear their home language spoken and see their culture represented in the classroom, it will create a more warm and inviting environment for them. Another key item to foster a supportive emotional climate are positive interactions between the educator and the child.Read More
Video: Integrating Family, Culture, and Language in the Curriculum
This video shares examples for how educators can incorporate various strategies to inform their curriculum: Collaboratively create an environment that represents families through books in different languages, music, and providing utensils/food/dolls in dramatic play that celebrate diversity.Read More
Video: Integrating Home Culture and Language in Learning Activities and Environments
This video provides examples for what educators can do to create a supportive classroom environment for Multilingual Learners. Activities can provide opportunities for MLs and their families to learn about other cultures. Materials (dolls, labeling, books) should celebrate and represent the diversity of the children in the classroom.Read More
Video: Use and Display Culturally Familiar Content
This video shows educators how they can represent their children's diversity of languages and culture in the classroom.Read More
Strategy Overview: I am Poems
The portrait, persona, or “I am” poem is an autobiographical and descriptive personal statement. The poems are self-expressive vehicles for students to introduce themselves to others and describe themselves.Read More
Strategy Overview: Name Acrostics
This strategy engages students in writing free verse acrostic poems about themselves using the letters of their names to begin each line. The use of children’s names can bring personal meaning to writing; and valuing children’s names is a part of a strong, respectful classroom community.Read More
Strategy Overview: Self Portraits
This activity provides an opportunity for students to do their own exploration, reflection, and expression about themselves through a facilitated process of looking at themselves in a mirror, talking about what they see, and drawing a self-portrait. Young children are developing an awareness of who they are and what they look like and increasing awareness of human diversity.Read More
Webinar: Family School Partnership—PreK
In this webinar video, building strong family partnerships is explained as well as providing some tangible strategies for early learning educators.Read More
Strategy Overview: Promoting a Sense of Identity
This strategy outlines ways teachers can work with families to promote children's sense of identity, connection to home language and culture, plus respect for diversity.Read More
Video: A Letter From My Mom
In this video, parents are encouraged to write a letter to their child and drop it in a classroom mailbox. Children sort the letters into student mailboxes and then read them with the support of the teacher.Read More
Video: English, Spanish, and Chinese, too
This video is an example of an interaction between a teacher and a child that respects and promotes all types of language learning in the classroom. The teacher and child read together and build a conversation about speaking in English, Spanish, and Chinese.Read More
Strategy Overview: Ensuring the Presence of Each Child’s Language
This resource provides a comprehensive list and explanation of the actions teachers can take to acknowledge, affirm, and support multiple languages in the classroom. Included are tips for engaging with families as "language experts" and capturing their linguistic knowledge on a planning template, and phrase cards with basic greetings in 10 common home languages.Read More
Website Article: Choosing Diverse Books for Your ELLs – Tips for Educators
This article is a comprehensive collection of tips, video interviews, additional links, and resources to support educators in choosing books for diverse Multilingual Learners in the classroom.Read More
Blog: Tackling the Challenges of Implementing Diverse Libraries at Your School
Access to culturally relevant books is critical for Multilingual Learners. This blog offers tips and suggestions on how to build a more inclusive collection of books in school libraries. Many additional resources and tools are linked.Read More
Guide: Don’t Underestimate the Power of Contexts in Math Curricula
This guide helps teachers assess whether the context of specific math tasks is accessible and familiar for Multilingual Learners. In these resources, teachers can read about the dos and don'ts of situating math instruction in a familiar context for Multilingual Learners.Read More
Checklist: Supporting Emergent Bilingual Children in Early Learning
This checklist provides teachers with several strategies to support Multilingual Learners by providing students with a rich classroom environment that builds their home language and English skills. This resource encourages teachers to consider how to add labels, images, culturally relevant materials to the classroom for children to engage with. This checklist also provides a list of extra resources to learn more about supporting bilingualism, and is available in Spanish and Chinese.Read More
Tip Sheet: Creating Environments that Include Children’s Home Languages and Cultures
This tip sheet provides guidance on how to set up the physical environment to include children’s home languages and culturally relevant materials. This tip sheet also provides examples of labels and materials to include in classrooms and why including these materials is important for Multilingual Learners.Read More
Educator Toolkit: My Name, My Identity- Creating an Inclusive and Respectful School Community
This digital book supports the socio-emotional learning of students by introducing example lesson plans that center on Multilingual Learners' identity. The resource includes videos, book lists, lesson plans, and many extension activities and further resources to help teachers build a healthy, asset-based community in the classroom.Read More
Website: Environment and Materials to Support Dual Language Learners
This resource describes the ways that teachers can set up their classroom environments to support Multilingual Learners. For example, teachers can include labels and other functional print in the home language and display and provide culturally relevant materials.Read More
Policy Brief: Culturally Responsive Teaching
This downloadable policy brief dives into the research and discussion of 8 competencies for culturally responsive teaching. An infographic on the website offers a good preview of the content.Read More
Strategy Overview: My Name
Nothing is closer to a Multilingual Learner's identity than their name. This resource offers culturally relevant examples of how to engage in meaningful activities with children about their names.Read More
Video: Affirming Language, Culture & Identity
This video shares asset-based strategies for teachers to engage with families, develop the socio-emotional health of children, and set up a classroom environment to support Multilingual Learners. This resource focuses on preschool but the content applies to all grade bands. Examples come from dual language classrooms.Read More
Video: Personalizing Instruction through Environmental Supports
This resource explains several ways that teachers can provide high-quality language support materials. For example, teachers can display culturally relevant materials and labels in each language. Teachers can also learn key words and phrases in children’s home languages, including cognates, to emphasize the connection between English and the home language.Read More
Video: Environmental Supports
This resource shows the importance of displaying culturally relevant materials for Multilingual Learners in the classroom, including pictures of family members and important events in children’s lives. Educators highlight the value of children's identities being reflected in the classroom to help them feel included.Read More
