What’s on your walls?
Creating belonging for Multilingual Learners
What’s on your walls?
What do your students see when they walk into your room? Imagine you are a newcomer from Somalia, Guatemala, or Thailand walking into your classroom. Look at your walls, classroom door, and your whiteboard. Are your students represented? Are there clues and cues to support them in the content area?
I challenge you to ask your students what they would like to see on the walls that aren’t there. What would most help them?
Here are some ideas to consider!
Content anchor charts:
An anchor chart is an artifact of classroom learning. Like an anchor, it holds students' and teachers' thoughts, ideas, and processes in place. Anchor charts can be displayed as reminders of prior learning and built upon over multiple lessons. Anchor charts provide support to MLs and others with key concepts, vocabulary, and sentence structures.
To make the most of anchor charts in your classroom, create them with your students and update them as you move from different ideas or concepts.
Display student work:
When students see their work on display, it can provide a sense of belonging in the classroom. It helps them learn from their classmates and see a greater purpose behind their work which is motivating and engaging.
Label items in the classroom with multiple languages:
When you label items around the classroom, students make connections between those words and the objects found around the classroom (e.g., the walls, the bulletin boards, desks, whiteboards, etc.) Providing multilingual learners with many opportunities to encounter and explore at least two to four new words each day can enhance their language development. When labeled in more than one language, all students are exposed to multilingualism.
Post world map with pins:
Posting a world map, preferably an accurate one, will allow all your students to pin where they were born. This allows all to learn a bit about where students are from in relation to one another. Posting the languages spoken in the region is an extra bonus.
Post scholars from ethnically and racially diverse backgrounds:
Whatever your content area, find examples of scholars from your field who represent a variety of ethnically and racial backgrounds and from women. You can find posters online, or you can have your students create them.
Thanks to teachers Nicole Wilson Steffes and Emma Metos for sharing what’s on their walls!
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