Language+Teaching+Strategies


 * Secretariat (2009) ||
 * Ministry of Education and Training (2005) Many Roots, Many Voices (p. 8‐34 only) ||

__ELLs in KINDERGARTEN__ //posted by Jane// Communicating with families of English Language Learners often begins in Kindergarten. This occurs when children enter the school system from families and communities in which their mother tongue is a language other than English. The child may be born in Canada, but perhaps his/her parents have spoken Urdu, Polish, Chinese or another language to them at birth. Perhaps the early caregivers are grandparents who are going about their daily tasks of shopping, cleaning and cooking with a baby or pre-schooler in the home - one who is soaking up the language of the immigrant grandparents. All of these early nurturing experiences are laying the foundation for literacy and providing rich linguistic opportunities in the child's mother tongue.

The Kindergarten classroom is often cited as a student's first exposure to English, other than the media. Parents of ELLs are frequently concerned that their child is learning English well and coping with the Kindergarten program, as well as developing peer interactions. Immigrant families sometimes find the Ontario school system quite unfamiliar and challenging to navigate. At the Kindergarten level classroom teachers need to devote time and effort to communicating well with all of the community, but the families of their ELLs really benefit from the extra effort at this point in time. One useful strategy in communication is to have multilingual signs posted in your classroom, ie. a welcome sign, bulletin board titles, window captions, artwork, etc. ... all in the various languages of your community, as well as in English. This practice not only provides the parents and grandparents of ELLs with practical information on what their child is learning, it demonstrates a commitment to diversity in your classroom.

To discover more practical strategies for partnering and communicating with families of ELLs, check out this document: Supporting English Language Learners in Kindergarten, p.27 - 31 Click here to see the Ministry Kindergarten document


 * Have you seen any of these other communication strategies being used in a Kindergarten classroom and if so, how successful were they?
 * What other information or strategies on these pages did you find helpful and why?