Multilingual Early Language Transmission (MELT) - Mercator ...

1.2.1 Guide for pre-school practitioners
One of the deliverables of the MELT project is a toolkit for practitioners: a guide for preschool
teachers. This toolkit builds on existing initiatives and best practices in the
participating regions, such as the book “Language Strategy for Day Care Centres” written by
Gammelgård (2008), which focuses on tools for creating language strategies for day care
centers. The toolkit includes guidelines, practical examples, lesson plans, and theory of
language development of children aged 0-4 years. The toolkit has been translated into the
eight languages of the four regions (Welsh-English, Swedish-Finnish, Breton-French, and
Frisian-Dutch).
In the school year 2010-2011, several practitioners (about 40 practitioners per region) in the
four minority regions have implemented and tested the toolkit for practitioners. During this
year the MELT-mentors visited a number of pre-school institutions. During these visits the
use of the toolkit in practice is evaluated. Based on the evaluation forms and Skype meetings
of the mentors the decision was made to update and restructure the toolkit. This included
changing the toolkit into a guide: a binder folder with bilingual (both languages; the minority
and majority language on one page) language topics sections, including theory and examples
of language activities. This Guide is intended for the whole pre-school setting: the pre-school
practitioners in nurseries, playgroups, day care centers and other pre-school professionals
dealing with bilingualism and young children from 0 - 4 years. They can use this Guide to give
them ideas to create a supportive and rich language environment (in the day care) for
children, aiming to make language work as an integral part of pre-school activities during the
day. Pre-school teams can develop linguistic awareness and promote the minority language
and multilingualism within their pre-schools. Practitioners of the pre-school institutions can
work with this Guide for a longer period, for example during one school year, and go through
one section at the time. Practitioners may also use this Guide in their own way, in sequential
order as a portfolio for personal growth.
The title of the Guide is: “Multilingualism for children's everyday life. A guide for
practitioners working with very young children.” The Guide consists of nine sections, the first
eight sections follow the same structure. Each section includes a theoretical background,
suggestions and tips for daily work, and issues for reflection and development. The ninth
section contains a number of examples of the language enriching activities.
The sections in the Guide are intended to give an answer to questions of practitioners such
as: How can I be a linguistic model for the children? How can I collaborate with the parents
on linguistic matters? How can observe the children’s language and its development be
observed? How can I make a rich language environment for children? What kind of language
activities are there for children and how should I organise these activities?
The content of the Guide for pre-school practitioners is:
- Introduction
- Section 1: Adults as linguistic role models
- Section 2: Collaboration with parents on linguistic matters
- Section 3: Everyday situations and the physical environment
- Section 4: Suggestions for observing and recording children’s language
- Section 5: Working with themes, and emphasis on linguistic factors
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