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How might Tonya and/or the ISB Translanguaging Team continue to support you?

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How might Tonya and/or the ISB Translanguaging Team continue to support you?

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As you explore and grow in translanguaging pedagogies, please record questions and next-step wants below. 👇

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Connect with educators around the world!

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Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.

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In what ways do translanguaging, UDL, and ISTE for students interweave with and amplify one another?

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In what ways do translanguaging, UDL, and ISTE for students interweave with and amplify one another?

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Reflect upon the attached PDF. In what ways do translanguaging, UDL, and ISTE for students interweave with and amplify one another? Please post your insights below. 👇

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EKC

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Utilize this resource to consider your school's language ecology.

So what?...Now what? Discuss your findings and develop an action plan for next steps.

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Using Translanguaging to Grow Multilingual Readers and Writers

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Using Translanguaging to Grow Multilingual Readers and Writers

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EKC Connections: Interview with

Dr. Cecilia M. Espinosa & Dr. Laura Ascenzi-Moreno

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EKC

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Utilize this resource to consider your ideal classroom's language ecology. Share your map and discuss your thoughts with a group of colleagues. How might you incorporate these ideas into your classroom space?

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Explore Your Classroom Ecology & Environmental Print

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#31DaysIBPOC - "How can we move past allowing for students to translanguage, but actually encourage it?"

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#31DaysIBPOC - "How can we move past allowing for students to translanguage, but actually encourage it?"

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Nawal Qarooni Casiano

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The Persian kilim rug where I sit cross-legged with my toddler each morning is handwoven and colored with vegetable dyes in Shiraz, where my mother is from, where the dusty Zagros mountains tower above her childhood memories. Years ago, this kilim was folded thrice and smashed into a battered suitcase, lugged across three continents from plane to plane amid pouches of spice mix my great-aunt blends in her sweltering Bahraini kitchen.

The artifacts we keep tell a story.

My mother says the shapes depicted in the kilim'spattern come to the weavers' minds during the process, explaining why there's a small cow's outline on one side but not the other, the inspired asymmetry more beautiful to me than the calculated symmetry cherished in Western design.

Agar gov az panjareh didan, gov mizashtan to kilim, my mother would tell me, falling into a melodic lilt of storytelling. If there was a cow outside the window, they'd weave a cow into the tapestry. Anything they'd see would appear in the art, you see? I imagined a dozen weavers around a single loom, together creating a large scale masterpiece.

This rug, and the dozens like it that lend warmth to the cold tile and austere wood of our homes away from Home, is a talisman that steels me and my family against the American exaltation of the individual, the ruthless mentality that we wake each day to win on our own for our own. For this rug and my life's refrain, it is the collective effort of individual ideas that renders the final piece gorgeous.

I believe in the collective.

On countless occasions, for as long as I can remember, my father reminded me that each of my actions affected the family. I feared a misstep because I couldn't afford to represent my culture and my parents poorly; I knew my younger siblings looked to me as a model. But it was more than that. In my family, there was never 'mine,' but rather 'ours.' There were relatives and friends of relatives in and out of our house, sometimes living on the couch for months. I'd come home from school to find a new Khaleh in our small kitchen, washing parsley and cilantro for ghormeh sabzi . Without a community in the States, clear across the globe from his birthplace in the always-hot border town of Khorramshahr, the salty air of the Persian Gulf traded for the gray sky flurries of Pittsburgh, my father ensured we understood our responsibility to first look out for each other, to provide for others, to join in efforts to breed collective success.
I bring these beliefs every day to my work as an educator. I ask myself and teachers I support, how can we rethink classroom design to exalt community? How can we encourage students to share artifacts of their learning, emphasizing collective contributions above individual competition?
Growing up in a predominantly white school, I placed scant value on these textured family intricacies. I was the story you've heard over and over again, the heart-breaking one, where the girl tries hard to assimilate until she's stripped completely of her history and reduced to the normative same. Straightened hair, curls smoking after each heated round-brush pull. Deep embarrassment in the back seat of a friend's car, V-neck reeking of fried onions. Family who spoke too loud, grandparents who'd visit too long, overseas cousins who'd fax letters asking questions about Amrica. At each new introduction, a panicked moment as the new friend or teacher inevitably butchered my name: would I let it go? Sometimes I'd want to be called Nina. When we were asked in class to write childhood vignettes, I wanted to share that I learned the lyrics to Googoosh's oonja kia kia before I formed memories in English. But I didn't. I wrote about a trip to the zoo.

College undid me. I found all kinds of brown people with different experiences and suddenly, I wanted N-A-W-A-L, an Arabic name pronounced Persian style with a 'v', spelled out on a necklace. I took a Persian class to empower my writing abilities in a language I had grown up speaking. I was flushed with gratitude for the years my grandparents lived with us; how special that time was together, the satellite Persian television playing on like the soundtrack to our lives. When I visited family in Iran as a young adult, I learned that the same turmeric onions whose odor embarrassed me as a teen were the crucial base of every meal I adored. I learned that the ancient poet Hafez was among the long line of storytellers in my rich lineage, his 700-year-old tomb in the Musalla Gardens of Shiraz becoming my destination for meditation and reflection.

I realized asymmetry is perfection.

And yet, this experience of alarming assimilation then metamorphosis into love of one's own culture is not necessarily what we want for our young people. How can we ensure that each child's cultural capital and unique histories are woven into the fabric of our classrooms? How can we move past allowing for students to translanguage, but actually encourage it? How can we ensure children have the opportunity to learn about their history as part of the scope, not as an emergence they might accidentally stumble upon at some point later in their lives- maybe, if they're lucky enough, fingers crossed? Our children are the curriculum, custodians of their unique, specific journeys. It is our job as leaders of learning to instill in them a supportive stance of amplifying each other's strengths. We must teach about beauty in collectivity, uniqueness and asymmetry.

This morning, Eloisa Nasim, the youngest of our four kids, played on the kilim at my feet. Like each of her siblings, she carries from both sides of her heritage: her father's Puerto Rican side and my Middle Eastern, names I hope she owns each day of her existence with extreme pride. As she pretend-walked her doll across the rug, she pointed to a shape I had never noticed before. She cocked her head and smiled at me.

"Bird," she cooed, more confident than I was about the depiction. Goodness, I hadn't seen that. It could've been a bird- one that came to the weaver's imagination back in Iran.

"Yes baby girl, dorost migi," I told her. "It's a parandeh."

It reminded me of the ancient Persian story my uncle used to tell, about a flock of thirty birds in search of the famed Simorgh, a benevolent mythical creature roughly analogous to the Western Phoenix. But when the group of birds arrived at what they believed to be the Simorgh's lakeside, what they saw was their collective reflection in the crystal water. You see, Si, in Farsi, means thirty; the Simorgh was not an all-powerful mystical being, but a manifestation of the awesome power inherent in the flock.

And that is exactly it. Our power resides in our collective strength. We are what we are seeking.

This blog post is part of the #31DaysIBPOC Blog Series, a month-long movement to feature the voices of indigenous and teachers of color as writers and scholars. Please to read yesterday's blog post by Edith Campbell (and be sure to check out the link at the end of each post to catch up on the rest of the blog series).

Nawal is an educator, literacy consultant and writer based out of Chicago, IL. Forever passionate about growing readers, writers and thinkers, Nawal worked as a classroom teacher, literacy coach and curriculum developer in Brooklyn and Chicago before launching NQC Literacy in 2014. She and her team support schools and districts by facilitating professional development and coaching around a holistic, balanced approach to literacy instruction: always looking through lenses of cultural-sustainability, inclusion and equity. She is the proud daughter of immigrants and her role as a mother to four multiethnic, multilingual kids shapes her approach as an educator. You can find Nawal in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood or on Twitter at @NQCLiteracy . She can be contacted directly at nawal.qcasiano@nqcliteracy.com.

The Persian kilim rug where I sit cross-legged with my toddler each morning is handwoven and colored with vegetable dyes in Shiraz, where my mother is from, where the dusty Zagros mountains tower above her childhood memories. Years ago, this kilim was folded thrice and smashed into a battered suitcase, lugged across three continents from plane to plane amid pouches of spice mix my great-aunt blends in her sweltering Bahraini kitchen.

The artifacts we keep tell a story.

My mother says the shapes depicted in the kilim'spattern come to the weavers' minds during the process, explaining why there's a small cow's outline on one side but not the other, the inspired asymmetry more beautiful to me than the calculated symmetry cherished in Western design.

Agar gov az panjareh didan, gov mizashtan to kilim, my mother would tell me, falling into a melodic lilt of storytelling. If there was a cow outside the window, they'd weave a cow into the tapestry. Anything they'd see would appear in the art, you see? I imagined a dozen weavers around a single loom, together creating a large scale masterpiece.

This rug, and the dozens like it that lend warmth to the cold tile and austere wood of our homes away from Home, is a talisman that steels me and my family against the American exaltation of the individual, the ruthless mentality that we wake each day to win on our own for our own. For this rug and my life's refrain, it is the collective effort of individual ideas that renders the final piece gorgeous.

I believe in the collective.

On countless occasions, for as long as I can remember, my father reminded me that each of my actions affected the family. I feared a misstep because I couldn't afford to represent my culture and my parents poorly; I knew my younger siblings looked to me as a model. But it was more than that. In my family, there was never 'mine,' but rather 'ours.' There were relatives and friends of relatives in and out of our house, sometimes living on the couch for months. I'd come home from school to find a new Khaleh in our small kitchen, washing parsley and cilantro for ghormeh sabzi . Without a community in the States, clear across the globe from his birthplace in the always-hot border town of Khorramshahr, the salty air of the Persian Gulf traded for the gray sky flurries of Pittsburgh, my father ensured we understood our responsibility to first look out for each other, to provide for others, to join in efforts to breed collective success.
I bring these beliefs every day to my work as an educator. I ask myself and teachers I support, how can we rethink classroom design to exalt community? How can we encourage students to share artifacts of their learning, emphasizing collective contributions above individual competition?
Growing up in a predominantly white school, I placed scant value on these textured family intricacies. I was the story you've heard over and over again, the heart-breaking one, where the girl tries hard to assimilate until she's stripped completely of her history and reduced to the normative same. Straightened hair, curls smoking after each heated round-brush pull. Deep embarrassment in the back seat of a friend's car, V-neck reeking of fried onions. Family who spoke too loud, grandparents who'd visit too long, overseas cousins who'd fax letters asking questions about Amrica. At each new introduction, a panicked moment as the new friend or teacher inevitably butchered my name: would I let it go? Sometimes I'd want to be called Nina. When we were asked in class to write childhood vignettes, I wanted to share that I learned the lyrics to Googoosh's oonja kia kia before I formed memories in English. But I didn't. I wrote about a trip to the zoo.

College undid me. I found all kinds of brown people with different experiences and suddenly, I wanted N-A-W-A-L, an Arabic name pronounced Persian style with a 'v', spelled out on a necklace. I took a Persian class to empower my writing abilities in a language I had grown up speaking. I was flushed with gratitude for the years my grandparents lived with us; how special that time was together, the satellite Persian television playing on like the soundtrack to our lives. When I visited family in Iran as a young adult, I learned that the same turmeric onions whose odor embarrassed me as a teen were the crucial base of every meal I adored. I learned that the ancient poet Hafez was among the long line of storytellers in my rich lineage, his 700-year-old tomb in the Musalla Gardens of Shiraz becoming my destination for meditation and reflection.

I realized asymmetry is perfection.

And yet, this experience of alarming assimilation then metamorphosis into love of one's own culture is not necessarily what we want for our young people. How can we ensure that each child's cultural capital and unique histories are woven into the fabric of our classrooms? How can we move past allowing for students to translanguage, but actually encourage it? How can we ensure children have the opportunity to learn about their history as part of the scope, not as an emergence they might accidentally stumble upon at some point later in their lives- maybe, if they're lucky enough, fingers crossed? Our children are the curriculum, custodians of their unique, specific journeys. It is our job as leaders of learning to instill in them a supportive stance of amplifying each other's strengths. We must teach about beauty in collectivity, uniqueness and asymmetry.

This morning, Eloisa Nasim, the youngest of our four kids, played on the kilim at my feet. Like each of her siblings, she carries from both sides of her heritage: her father's Puerto Rican side and my Middle Eastern, names I hope she owns each day of her existence with extreme pride. As she pretend-walked her doll across the rug, she pointed to a shape I had never noticed before. She cocked her head and smiled at me.

"Bird," she cooed, more confident than I was about the depiction. Goodness, I hadn't seen that. It could've been a bird- one that came to the weaver's imagination back in Iran.

"Yes baby girl, dorost migi," I told her. "It's a parandeh."

It reminded me of the ancient Persian story my uncle used to tell, about a flock of thirty birds in search of the famed Simorgh, a benevolent mythical creature roughly analogous to the Western Phoenix. But when the group of birds arrived at what they believed to be the Simorgh's lakeside, what they saw was their collective reflection in the crystal water. You see, Si, in Farsi, means thirty; the Simorgh was not an all-powerful mystical being, but a manifestation of the awesome power inherent in the flock.

And that is exactly it. Our power resides in our collective strength. We are what we are seeking.

This blog post is part of the #31DaysIBPOC Blog Series, a month-long movement to feature the voices of indigenous and teachers of color as writers and scholars. Please to read yesterday's blog post by Edith Campbell (and be sure to check out the link at the end of each post to catch up on the rest of the blog series).

Nawal is an educator, literacy consultant and writer based out of Chicago, IL. Forever passionate about growing readers, writers and thinkers, Nawal worked as a classroom teacher, literacy coach and curriculum developer in Brooklyn and Chicago before launching NQC Literacy in 2014. She and her team support schools and districts by facilitating professional development and coaching around a holistic, balanced approach to literacy instruction: always looking through lenses of cultural-sustainability, inclusion and equity. She is the proud daughter of immigrants and her role as a mother to four multiethnic, multilingual kids shapes her approach as an educator. You can find Nawal in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood or on Twitter at @NQCLiteracy . She can be contacted directly at nawal.qcasiano@nqcliteracy.com.

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The Persian kilim rug where I sit cross-legged with my toddler each morning is handwoven and colored with vegetable dyes in Shiraz, where my mother is from, where the dusty Zagros mountains tower above her childhood memories. Years ago, this kilim was folded thrice and smashed into a battered suitca

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A two-minute overview of pedagogical translanguaging from
Eowyn Crisfield

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EKC

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Recording, Revision and Repetition: Empowering Multilingual Writers

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Recording, Revision and Repetition: Empowering Multilingual Writers

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Nawal Qarooni Casiano

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I shut the door to my closet and sat on the big green Rubbermaid tub, the one filled with hand-me-downs for the next kid. In the quietest place I could think of, hiding from my four children, I pressed record and started reading.

Stumbling once or twice, I went back into the Word document and adjusted the writing accordingly, then tried to record again.

So it went for each piece of writing for the Slice of Life Story Challenge in March, where I created an audio recording of my voice to accompany the alphabetic, where I learned a ton about myself as a multilingual writer. I realized that sometimes,we do our best teaching when we think, brainstorm and write alongside students. Writing every day helped me rethink the writing process, so in the classrooms where I coach, we are sharing new ideas with students.

Here, I offer three suggestions for how to support writers in the classroom with recording, revision and repetition.

RECORDING AS A REVISION TOOL

Because I grew up speaking both Farsi and English, with a lot of Arabic peppered in from my father's Bahraini side, my brain is a melange of words that don't always come out the way I initially intend. In my experiences as a newspaper writer and as a writing teacher, I have learned that recording my voice before getting to the end of the writing process supports my composition.

Oral rehearsal - the practice of saying aloud what we want to write - is a useful strategy for all students, since what we think we can say and what we say, we can write. And it is typically thought of as a planning tool. Before putting pen to paper, teachers might ask students to say aloud what they want to write, thinking across their fingers as they add details.

But for multilingual students particularly, recording an audio track as part of composing writing, before its final iteration, enhances alphabetic writing changes as a revision tool. Students are often better equipped to hear where they meant for writing to sound differently, and thus, able to adjust the writing on paper before preparing the piece for an audience.

I had to hide in my closet to find space for recording. In the classroom, teachers can prompt students to record themselves using headphones and apps like Mote or Google Voice Recorder, both easy extensions available for free downloading.

Often, the writing process in classrooms includes the recording and presentation of a 'final' piece. But as a multilingual writer, I value recording and auditory composition throughout the process far more than its inclusion at the end alone. Revision looks different for each and every writer, particularly for our multilingual students. Teaching students that audio recordings can be used as a revision tool is a helpful way for students to recognize that composition is personal and nuanced.

Recording and listening back to my writing helps support the cadence of sentences and various sentence lengths. I know, for example, where I want to isolate a sentence, and I know when I prefer a staccato list. Through recording and listening back to my words, I am able to more fluidly compose.

Implications for the classroom:

1. Explore a few options for audio recording, and determine which app feels easiest for you and your students.

2. Offer audio recording as a writing tool earlier in the writing process, introducing the strategy of revising writing after recording to ensure it sounds the way the author intended.

3. Show more than one writing process image, so students know that the process looks different for each writer.

Writing process with recording as an oral rehearsal and revision tool.

Traditional writing process, visual by Maureen Murray, a Chicago teacher.

AUTHENTICITY IN TRANSLANGUAGING

When I write about my families or memories, more often than not, my writing includes a line or two of Farsi. It is the language I grew up speaking and it's the language of my ancestors, as my parents were both born and raised in Iran. Including the English translation for readers felt empowering on its own - this idea that I could toggle between English and the other language that makes up the rest of my mind. But I quickly realized that I wanted for readers to hear the lyricism and poetry of the words in Farsi, not just the translation.

Translanguaging is when a person's full linguistic capabilities are used, honored and exalted; when one peppers in various languages when it makes sense to the speaker and writer. Listen to a piece with Farsi translanguaging here.

Recording my voice provided that opportunity, adding the authenticity of my voice as the author; adding the personalization of my translanguaging.

When multilingual student writers are able to use all parts of their language repertoires, they are able to access all parts of themselves (España and Herrera, 2020). As writing teachers, if we encourage these practices, we exalt the whole child. Forcing multilingual students to compartmentalize their languages, like checking baggage at the door, as Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul once lamented, serves no one.

Implications for the classroom:

1. Use multimodal writing mentors in minilessons and for small group examples that include translanguaging, so that multilingual students see the array of possibilities when composing. It is important for all teachers and students to make space for these textured pieces of writing, and seek opportunities to celebrate this work too, multilingual or not.

2. Encourage the fluid inclusion of various languages when students speak, draw, and create.

3. Ensure students are exposed to multiple languages in your classroom - whether in read alouds, short video clips, music tracks or classroom (virtual!) visitors.

Book recommendations: Octopus Stew (Velasquez 2021); Fry Bread (Maillard 2019), and Drawn Together (Minh Le 2018)

REPETITION

When I look back at my month of slice of life writing, I quickly realized that at least half of the entries include a repeated line or phrase.
My heart became whole in Iran. Life was less complicated then.
I found myself reflecting. Was it a stylistic choice, rendering my writing more poetic, or was it necessary for me, to ensure my writing stayed on topic? The truth is, it's likely a combination, but I found that the through-line supported my writing organization. It felt like a life-line that kept my writing and voice steady throughout. There were times when I had written a repeated phrase across the text but removed it once the whole piece was completely composed; it didn't stay each and every time. And yet, I felt I needed it.

For personal and narrative writing of multilingual writers especially, the use of repetition throughout a piece of writing feels supportive and useful as a strategy to keep the writing cohesive.

Implications for the classroom:

1. Explicitly teach students how to craft a line or phrase that could provide glue throughout the piece to tie all the parts together by asking, "What do you want readers to take away?"

2. Once the piece is composed, ask students to cross out the line to determine if it stylistically sounds better kept in, or removed. The purpose is to keep the piece beautifully woven together.

3. Include mentor texts with repetition used throughout, calling attention to the author's purposeful craft move.

Book recommendations: What Color Is My Hijab? (Ibrahim 2020); Watch Me (Richards, 2021); Magnificent Homespun Brown (Doyon, 2020); You Matter (Robinson, 2020); Big Papa and the Time Machine (Bernstrom, 2020).

Recording for revision, encouraging translanguaging, and repetition are useful strategies to exalt and empower multilingual writers. As teachers of multilingual students, encouraging translanguaging and recording as revision is akin to telling students: every aspect of you is valued. Every aspect of you is important.

Learn more:

Published by Nawal Qarooni

Nawal is an educator, literacy consultant and writer based out of Chicago, IL. Nawal worked as a classroom teacher, literacy coach and curriculum developer in Brooklyn and Chicago before launching NQC Literacy in 2014. She and her team support schools and districts by facilitating professional development and coaching around a holistic, balanced approach to literacy instruction: always looking through lenses of cultural-sustainability, inclusion and equity. Nawal earned a Bachelor of English from the University of Michigan, a Master of Teaching from Brooklyn College, and a Master of Journalism from Syracuse University's Newhouse School. She won a New Jersey Press Association Award for her international reporting and transitioned into education as a New York City Teaching Fellow. She is the proud daughter of immigrants and her role as a mother to four multiethnic, multilingual kids shapes her approach as an educator. You can find Nawal in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood or on Twitter at @NQCLiteracy. View all posts by Nawal Qarooni

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Recording, Revision and Repetition: Empowering Multilingual Writers

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Recording for revision, encouraging translanguaging, and repetition are useful strategies to exalt and empower multilingual writers. As teachers of multilingual students, encouraging translanguaging and recording as revision is akin to telling students: every aspect of you is valued. Every aspect of you is important.

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Supporting Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners

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Supporting Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners

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EKC Connections: Interview with Dr. Andrea Honigsfeld

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François Grosjean

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François Grosjean
University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland

A number of myths about bilingualism are discussed in my new book, Bilingual: Life and Reality (Harvard University Press, 2010). They are summarized here.

Bilingualism is a rare phenomenon. WRONG. It has been estimated that more than half the world's population is bilingual, that is lives with two or more languages. Bilingualism is found in all parts of the world, at all levels of society, in all age groups. Even in countries with many monolinguals, the percentage of bilinguals is high. For example, one can estimate that there are as many as 50 million bilinguals in the United States today.

Bilinguals acquire their two or more languages in childhood. WRONG. One can become bilingual in childhood, but also in adolescence and in adulthood. In fact, many adults become bilingual because they move from one country (or region) to another and have to acquire a second language. With time, they can become just as bilingual as children who acquire their languages in their early years (minus the native speaker accent). In general, people become bilingual because life requires the use of two or more languages. This can be due to immigration, education, intermarriage, contact with other linguistic groups within a country, and so on.

Bilinguals have equal and perfect knowledge of their languages. WRONG. This is a myth that has had a long life! In fact, bilinguals know their languages to the level that they need them. Some bilinguals are dominant in one language, others do not know how to read and write one of their languages, others have only passive knowledge of a language and, finally, a very small minority, have equal and perfect fluency in their languages. What is important to keep in mind is that bilinguals are very diverse, as are monolinguals.

Real bilinguals have no accent in their different languages. WRONG. Having an accent or not in a language does not make you more or less bilingual. It depends on when you acquired your languages. In fact, some extremely fluent and balanced bilinguals have an accent in the one, or the other, language; other, less fluent, bilinguals may have no accent at all.

Bilinguals are born translators. WRONG. Even though bilinguals can translate simple things from one language to another, they often have difficulties with more specialized domains. The reaction people have is almost always, "But I thought you were bilingual!". In fact, bilinguals use their languages in different situations, with different people, in different domains of life (this is called the complementarity principle). Unless they learned their languages formally (in school, for example), or have trained to be translators, they often do not have translations equivalents in the other language.

Mixing languages is a sign of laziness in bilinguals. WRONG. Mixing languages such as code-switching and borrowing is a very common behavior in bilinguals speaking to other bilinguals. It is a bit like having coffee with milk instead of just straight black. The two language repertoires are available in bilingual situations and can be used at will. Many expressions and words are better said in the one or the other language; mixing permits to use the right one without having recourse to translation which simply may not do justice to what one wants to express. This said, in other situations, bilinguals know that they cannot mix their languages (e.g. when speaking to monolinguals) and they then stick to just one language.

Bilinguals are also bicultural. WRONG. Even though many bilinguals are also bicultural (they interact with two cultures and they combine aspects of each), many others are monocultural (e.g. the inhabitants in the German speaking part of Switzerland who often acquire three or four languages during their youth). Thus one can be bilingual without being bicultural just as one can be monolingual and bicultural (e.g. the British who live in the USA).

Bilinguals have double or split personalities. WRONG. Bilinguals, like monolinguals, adapt their behavior to different situations and people. This often leads to a change of language in bilinguals (e.g. a Japanese-English bilingual speaking Japanese to her grandmother and English to her sister). This change of language has led to the idea that bilinguals are "different" when speaking the one, or the other, language. But like monolinguals, it is the situation or the person one is speaking to which induces slight changes in behavior, opinions, feelings, etc., not the fact that one is bilingual.

Bilinguals express their emotions in their first language. WRONG. Some bilinguals have grown up learning two languages simultaneously and hence have two first languages with which they will express their emotions. And for the majority of bilinguals who have acquired their languages successively-first one language and then, some years later, another-the pattern is not clear. Emotions and bilingualism produce a very complicated but also very personal reality that has no set rules. Some bilinguals prefer to use one language, some the other, and some use both of them to express their feelings and emotions.

Bilingualism will delay language acquisition in children. WRONG. This is a myth that was popular back in the middle of the 20th Century. Since then much research has shown that bilingual children are not delayed in their language acquisition. This said, one should keep in mind that bilingual children, because they have to deal with two or more languages, are different in some ways from monolingual children, but definitely not on rate of language acquisition. As for bilingual children with language challenges (e.g. dyslexia), they are not proportionally more numerous than monolingual children with the same challenges.

The language spoken in the home will have a negative effect on the acquisition of the school language, when the latter is different. WRONG. In fact, the home language can be used as a linguistic base for acquiring aspects of the other language. It also gives children a known language to communicate in (with parents, caretakers, and, perhaps, teachers) while acquiring the other.

If parents want their children to grow up bilingual, they should use the one person - one language approach. WRONG. There are many ways of making sure a child grows up bilingual: caretaker 1 speaks one language and caretaker 2 speaks the other; one language is used in the home and the other outside the home; the child acquires his/her second language at school, etc. The critical factor is NEED. The child must come to realize, most of the time unconsciously, that he/she needs two or more languages in everyday life. This is where the one person - one language approach often breaks down as the bilingual child quickly realizes that the weaker (often minority) language is not really needed (the caretakers or other family members often speak the other, stronger language, to one another, so why keep up the weaker language?). A better approach is that all family members use the weaker language at home, if at all possible, so as to increase the child's exposure to it and mark the language's "main" territory.

Children raised bilingual will always mix their languages. WRONG. If bilingual children interact in both bilingual and monolingual situations, then they learn to mix languages at certain times only. When they are with monolinguals (e.g. Grandma who doesn't speak any English), they quickly learn to speak just the one language (communication breaks down otherwise). It is important though that the situation be truly monolingual (and not a "pretend situation" in which a bilingual parent pretends not to know the other language); children will make an effort to speak only one language if they feel it is vital for communication. Thus, caretakers will want to create natural monolingual environments where children will need, and hence use, just one language.

For further reading click on the following links:

1. François Grosjean's new book Bilingual: Life and Reality (Harvard University Press, 2010)

2. A short text, "What parents want to know about bilingualism", by François Grosjean

3. An interview of François Grosjean on bilingualism

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Francois Grosjean - Myths about bilingualism bilingualism

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Francois Grosjean, François Grosjean, Grosjean, psycholinguistics, language processing, bilingualism, biculturalism, sign language, aphasia, applied linguistics, BIMOLA, language processing in aphasics, prosodic structures, second language grammar checking, Life with two languages, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition

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Intentional planning to empower our learners.

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Intentional planning to empower our learners.

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Science, being a vocab-heavy subject, providing vocab in other languages can help students make stronger connections.

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...what other middle grade/YA-appropriate books use translanguaging as a literary device?

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...what other middle grade/YA-appropriate books use translanguaging as a literary device?

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The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora by Pablo Cartaya is one...

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Students complete independent research in the languages of their choice and include appropriate translations and citations.

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Translanguage infographics of Creative/Design-Thinking Processes & Standards

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UDL - plan with flexibility in mind to make learning more inviting and authentic. Giving students options to do research in their home language to help their understanding. Tools available to do research in their home language in addition to English. All these blended together helps the learner gain a deeper understanding than if just learning in English

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In the World/Native Language department, it is common that we ask students to see if there are any connections between their native language and the world language they are studying. Studies have shown that when students connect their native language and the one they are learning, they  learn faster and also have greater recollection of the new knowledge.

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In the World/Native Language department, it is common that we ask students to see if there are any connections between their native language and the world language they are studying. Studies have shown that when students connect their native language and the one they are learning, they  learn faster and also have greater recollection of the new knowledge.

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-Choice helps empower students and gives them the freedom to self-manage.

-Importance of context for UDL and translanguaging. Students can choose language resources depending on the purpose of the task.

-Long overdue but wonderful that we are starting.

-Mini-take aways that can easily be implemented.

-Context in different cultures.

-Parent education is important. How can we educate them about the importance of multilingualism?

-DEIJ lens- Students going to universities in different countries and understanding the different cultural contexts.

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Students will be encouraged to research in their language of choice.

Key terms and concepts - students should be allowed /encouraged to write lists of terms / concepts in language of their choice and the language where they do much of their thinking.

Students will be encouraged to write out the essay prompt into their own language- students write these on the board and groups walk around the room and share

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How can we educate parents about the importance of multilingualism?