Including Multilingual Children in Your Setting
The idea of having a child in your childminding setting who does not speak English, or your own home language, may seem daunting. However, supporting a child’s home language, even when you cannot speak it yourself, is not as impossible as it sounds. With a little extra care, bilingual and multilingual children can be accommodated and thrive in what was a monolingual childminding setting and their inclusion has many positive benefits to all children involved.
One of the most important things is for you to maintain a balance between helping children to acquire new language skills and supporting their home language. It is essential that children who are immersed into alternative speaking settings have help and feel able to use their home language. Children need to feel their language and culture is welcomed, valued and respected by having it acknowledged and visibly supported. Childminders should be careful not to provide transitional bilingual education that shifts the child from speaking their home language to the dominant majority language e.g. English but to maintain and enhance children’s first language. In order to achieve this, the whole environment of your setting should reflect a multicultural and multilingual approach.
Settling In Period
When you are discussing a placement with prospective parents you will be able to find out more information about a child’s home language and experience with other languages. Children may be initially shy and rely on their first language or be able to understand more words than they can speak. Discussing what words a child can speak or understand will help you build a more accurate picture of their current language skills.
It may also help to find out why parents have chosen a setting with a different language. Some parents may deliberately choose a setting to help their child acquire an additional language; others may have been forced into their decision by a lack of alternative childcare facilities. The reason for their choice may influence how they feel about the setting and language support. If they are hoping a child will develop new language skills you may need to discuss why you want to incorporate their home language too.
A settling in period where the child attends with a parents or other family member that can act as a translator will be particularly important. During these you and other children present can learn and use key words and phrases such as greetings, toilet, yes, no, mummy, daddy, drink and eat. They also allow the child to learn your daily routines such as preparing for a school run or a meal. Having predictable routines and behaviour expectations will help children to settle more easily. These could be enhanced by the use of photographic representations of the timetable and expected behaviour. These photographs are examples of the visual and contextual clues which enable children to interact. Other examples include conceptualising environmental print by the addition of photographs, for example, for the contents of boxes.
While a child is settling in, it can be beneficial to introduce the child to another child through an activity they can share as this will be less intimidating than being immersed in the larger group and expected to interact.
Children will need support as they learn and make sense of new cultural values and behaviours. A positive attitude from both you and the other children present lead to more success in becoming bilingual. Incorporating their home language is essential to their self esteem and to help them settle quickly into your setting.
Multilingual Environment & Resources
To create a multilingual environment you need to provide multi cultural events and resources and real life experiences and activity’s children can make sense of and identify with. In a monolingual childminding setting providing opportunities to communicate with adults, parents, peers, older children and others from the community who speak their home language and encouraging children’s use of the home language are also important.
When you are planning try to use familiar topics, songs, stories, rhymes and artefacts. Suitable artefacts might include dressing up clothes reflecting child’s own culture, cooking implements, tableware, calendars, pictures, leaflets, newspapers. It can be helpful to provide activities which demonstrate the purpose and function of items for example, using a Wok and chopsticks for stir frying. This allows children the opportunity to see their own culture reflected and other children have the opportunity to learn about different cultures in context. Experiment with role play with structured areas to represent home experiences to encourage interaction and engagement. Literacy materials can also be provided so children can use print in a relevant and purposeful manner, e.g. recipe books, menus and magazines.
Where possible use some songs, stories and rhymes in children’s home language. Stories from their own culture help children with their emotional security. Older more confident bilingual children, parents and family members can help support you and the children by helping to teach songs, dances, stories of other cultures, rhymes and legends in both English and the cultural language of the story. Share these activities with the whole group and not just those speaking the language. Props, gestures and facial expressions can be used to help their understanding.
The books and toys you provide should reflect the diversity of society in positive ways and representing language in addition to English particularly children’s home languages. Duel language books and story and song CD’s are available to borrow from libraries, or parents may have some to share. Other appropriate books include those depicting stories and people from other cultures, legends and folk tales from children’s home culture.
Books for bilingual children beginning to read need to be chosen with illustrations that match the text and of concepts children are familiar with. Abstract concepts may be more difficult to grasp. Abstract phonics in a foreign tongue may be more difficult for bilingual children to achieve.
Graphic or mark making activities should contain all the usual provisions used for monolingual children, with additional alphabet books and picture dictionaries in the emergent bilingual child’s first language. Examples of scripts familiar to all the children should be provided and early attempts at mark making encouraged and discussed. Adults could be invited to model writing and could include family and community members.
Parents, older siblings and family members are the most valuable source of multilingual tutors, artefacts, songs stories and recipes. They will be able to tell you what resources are relevant to them, never assume that just because a child identifies with a particular culture they will follow all the practices, for example just because a child is Chinese, does not necessarily mean at home they eat with chop sticks. Including parents and families informs childminders about home and community-based languages and experiences and the literacy experiences of the children and their parent’s expectations.
