by Karen Nemeth
No, really. I’m asking you if you are serious about being an advocate for preschool DLLs. Because getting serious means we have to go beyond occasional events and start weaving awareness of DLLs into everyday actions. There’s a lot of talk about preschool initiatives right now so what we do and say about young children who are growing up with multiple languages is critical right now! Here are some of the strategies I use. Please feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments!
10. Target administrators. Seriously. You can train teachers till the cows come home, but if their bosses don’t attend, don’t read, don’t agree… all that training is lost.
11. Coaches and mentors = MUST learn more about best practices for teaching DLLs. No more saying ‘that’s not my specialty’. If you work in a program where almost every classroom has at least one child who is a DLL – it is your job to know. We’re counting on you!
12. Walk the walk. Do a little bit to learn a new language every day. Listen to songs, play games with the children, listen to CDs in the car… whatever you can.
13. Consider your assessments – don’t just accept them. No. we really really really do not have to do things because ‘that’s the way we always did that.”
14. Think about state and local partnerships. WHY doesn’t your college’s ESL department ever speak to the Early Childhood Education department??? Who is on your state’s early childhood collaborative? Play nicely together!
How about this for an advocacy question: Young DLLs are 25% of our population of preschool-aged children, so, if your program only meets the needs of the other 75% of the children, then even the best program will never score better than 75%. Is it really your goal as a teacher, a director, a professor, or a policymaker to aim for nothing more than a “C” average for our educational system?? Of course not. If we want all of our children to be ready to succeed in Kindergarten – then we have to work harder to meet the needs of ALL of the children – not just the easy ones. Seriously.
Karen,
Our Total Learning program for birth – nine year olds has been shown to be particularly effective for ELLs – not surprising since it is arts-based, hands-on, and targets oral language and vocabulary building. However, until I read this article, I wouldn’t have included a separate area addressing DLLs as we develop our on-line, blended professional development. Thank you for reminding me that I need to seriously include our expertise with DLLs throughout our site!
At Boston’s Chinatown Neighborhood Center we are struggling with how to accurately measure dual language development. In my travels I found Cambridge is using the BELA assessment tool and has translated it into several languages and we are going to use this tool. The measures in Teaching Strategies Gold are not adequate. I am concerned that as we move towards having to report child outcomes the tools that are being accepted really do not gauge dual language learning. The other tool I have seen is WIDA but it starts at kindergarten age. Have you a suggestion for something else we should look at before we make the leap towards Bela? We are a dual Chinese ( Mandarin/Cantonese and English early childhood program). The model has a Chinese speaker and English speaker sharing a classroom and developing a theme based, developmentally appropriate curriculum with materials and activities to match the theme in each area of the classroom. This enhances the richness of exposure to language. We want a tool that can accurately measure in both languages. So far BELA is what I can find.
Bernadette – you are asking such an important question… but there is no easy answer yet. I agree that we are seeing more talk about assessment and accountability, but the research and development of multilingual assessment tools have not kept up with the needs of the field. Currently, best advice is to train teachers to be excellent observers and rely heavily on portfolio collections, teacher observations, and consultation with families.
What qualification should a preschool teachers have? Also tell me the qualities.
This report provides great insights about what preschool teachers need to know to work effectively with young DLLs:http://www.nclr.org/images/uploads/pages/DLLTC-Webinar-PPT.pdf
As a bilingual speech language pathologist I complete formal standardized assessments with bilingual students. I used to create informal referenced-based measures for teachers to use as a screening tool. With DLL’s I like teachers to consider the Communication domain. Yes, pre-academic skills are important but I want to know if they have the language skills necessary to support the academics. You need to look at L1, L2, receptive/expressive in the 4 systems of language (articulation/phonology, semantics, grammar/syntax, pragmatics). I look at narrative samples, language samples, dynamic assessments, etc.
Diane Staehr-Fenner wrote this blog post for colorincolorado.org about how educators can use the “elevator pitch” to advocate for ELLs. They let me participate by creating my own video clip. See if this is something you would like to try – http://blog.colorincolorado.org/2014/05/22/whats-your-elevator-speech-about-your-expertise-with-the-common-core-for-ells/
I am a speech therapist (speech-language pathologist). I would like to see expertise in language acquisition of DLLs, or bilingual/multilingual children become a given for our profession, and to be able to have appropriate assessments and procedures for these issues. Thank you for inspiring me to do my part.