Translanguaging strategies for the multilingual classroom

Find out about your students experiences and abilities in their home language

Find out about your students and their families’ language use at home, socially, and prior school experiences. Use your district’s student information system, send home the “Bilingual Student Identification Checklist,” and most importantly, talk to your students and their families!

Know the benefits of using and developing home languages and teach that to students

All students should understand the advantages of being bilingual. Also understand and discuss the consequences of language loss.

Use multiple languages in your classroom environment

Have students help you add their languages to your charts. Ask families to help if students aren’t literate in their home language. Use GoogleTranslate for translating academic vocabulary. Use texts and online resources in multiple languages, not just for newcomers.

Provide and scaffold opportunities to speak and work in home languages

  • Structured partnerships – depending on activity and purpose, pair students with same home languages. Don’t just “allow” but expect that students use their home languages. Pair more proficient with less proficient. Consider home language education and literacy experience.
  • Prompt students about how to engage in a conversation in their home languages. Give strategies for what to do when they don’t know how to say something (circumlocution – think of words they do know), how to help each other when they get stuck or how they should summarize rather than translate if they are talking about a piece of text.
  • Provide concrete, visual resources to support the talk (text, pictures, reader’s or writer’s notebook, charts). May need to start with less academic topics, i.e. talk about what they did on the weekend, retell a familiar picture book.
  • Ask them to tell you in English what they were talking, reading, writing about.
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References

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Garcia, O., Johnson, S.I., & Seltzer, K. (2017). The translanguaging classroom: Leveraging student bilingualism for learning. Philadelphia: Caslon.

Garcia, O. & Kleyn, T. (2016). Translanguaging with Multilingual Students. New York, NY: Routledge.

Hesson, S., Seltzer, K., & Woodley, H.H. (2014). Translanguaging in curriculum and instruction: A CUNY-NYSIEB guide for educators. Retrieved from:

Resources

Bilingual Student Identification Checklist
Literary Essay Unit Resources - Highline
Why Use Our Home Languages at School Pictorial-video
Using Home Languages in GLAD
Spanish & Vietnamese resources on DL collab site - Highline
Text in multiple languages for newcomers
“Teaching Bilinguals: Even if You’re Not One” video series

Rachel HoffHighline Language Learning DepartmentMarch 8, 2018