How multilingual is your classroom?

Sep 9, 20224 min read

One of my 'personal inquiries' last year was on multilingualism, and it has inspired me to value, encourage, utilise and integrate the languages of our learning community. Of course, there are still a lot of things to be done, but at least we put on some foundations to keep us going.

The International Baccalaureate Organisation (IB) has strongly emphasised that multilingualism is a FACT, a RIGHT and a RESOURCE for teaching and learning (Language and Learning in IB Programmes, 2011). Therefore, IB schools find ways to INTEGRATE, REPRESENT, and VALUE the languages of their learning community. It has published some documents to support IB schools in implementing multilingualism. You can access these through the programme resource centre using your MyIB account.

From Principles into Practice: Learning and Teaching (The Language Learner section, pages 88-96)
Language Learning in IB Programmes (published September 2011)
How Multilingual Is My School - A Self-audit Tool

Other helpful documents are those published by UNESCO on multilingualism (Google it!). They are worth reading. Another beneficial resource is the free digital book published by The British Council entitled 'Using Multilingual Approaches: Moving from Theory to Practice' (British Council, 2019). Amongst others, it has compilations of different strategies, activities and projects on how you can promote and implement multilingualism in your classrooms.

I suggest that if you haven't yet done it, go over those resources above to unpack the concept of multilingualism. Having an in-depth understanding of multilingualism is the only way we can find value in implementing it in our classrooms. I understand though, that learning about and implementing multilingualism in our classroom is a journey. It takes time, and it helps when we consistently include it as part of our teaching reflections and planning meetings, making it a permanent and essential component of our teaching and learning culture. It is always my opinion (and maybe different from yours) that we act according to our beliefs and values. Hence, if we say we believe in international-mindedness and value diversity, we ensure that multilingualism becomes part of our classroom culture.

Without a doubt, multilingualism benefits students academically and affirms their identity. Below are some ways to make multilingualism part of our classroom culture:

Collective understanding- Members of the school community should have a shared understanding of multilingualism to support its implementation in the classrooms fully.

a- Review your language policy to ensure that it has a multilingual focus. For example, below is the philosophy section of the language policy of my present school, Khartoum International Community School (KICS).

b- Do related professional development for all teachers and parents.

c- Include it in your planning meetings agenda so you can discuss it in-depth and plan how to promote and implement it in your classroom.

Here is a sample minute of our year 4 planning meeting. During our planning meetings, with respect to teachers' agency, they are given opportunities to choose topics they want us to discuss about their units and teaching and learning.

Below is a sample plan from our music specialist, Joanna Dempster, integrating into a year 5 unit on Self-awareness.

2. Translanguaging- Ensure students are making connections between their languages or use language skills from one language to support another so we can help them make meaning, access content and promote cognitive growth (Translanguaging, 2018).

a- Give students opportunities to use any language, e.g. home language, they wish to use when presenting their learning.

I had the chance to cover the year 3 class for three weeks, and it so happened that they were about to start their unit on Buildings and Designs, so I facilitated their tuning-in engagements and part of their finding-out. As a component of their tuning-in activities, I asked them to create generalisations on the activities we had in connection to our unit's central idea.

As always, I encouraged the students to use their home language or any language they know. The student below is very fluent in English and chose to use Arabic. When I asked him to translate what he wrote in English orally, I was impressed with the generalisations he came up with. Interestingly, our Arabic teachers don't understand what he wrote. Nevertheless, they took the opportunity to guide further and teach the student how to write in Arabic correctly.

This work is from another student who chose to write in English.

Benedict Bowler, our Year 6 teacher, also shared some of his students' work using different languages.

b- Provide students with reading resources in different languages to carry out their inquiries and explore concepts.

- Ask students (or contact their parents) if they have appropriate and related books, magazines or newspapers in their home language or other languages that they can bring to school.

- Ask the school librarian.

- There are digital resources in different languages that students can use- free and paid.

Epic! (free for classrooms)- It offers English, Spanish, Chinese and French books. It's free for classrooms.
RAZ Kids (paid subscription)- It has books in English, Spanish, French, Polish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.
MyOn (paid subscription)- Its books are available in English and Spanish, while its MyOn News articles are available in English, Spanish and French.
International Children's Digital Library (free)- It has books in different languages.
Children's Books Online (free)- It has a range of books in various languages.
Magic Blox (free)- It has lots of books in multiple languages.

c- Support students who are struggling with the language of instruction to use their home language first before they can translate the key idea or whole text into the language of instruction.

d- Encourage students to communicate orally or in writing in their home language, e.g. students who speak the same language in a group discussion; sending emails to parents or classmates.