CPF Magazine Winter 2020 Issue

dual-language books, documentaries, installation art exhibits
and dramatic performances.
Beyond the ESL classroom, identity text work can offer
mainstream teachers a powerful strategy for building all students’
appreciation of linguistic diversity and for leveraging students’ and
their families’ multilingual literacy expertise. Over the past seven
years, I have collaborated with classroom teachers across English
and French schools in Canada, France and the U.S. to explore
the affordances, challenges and outcomes of engaging students
collaboratively in multilingual project-based learning (MPBL). Most
recently, I’ve partnered with elementary teachers in Toronto in
English, French immersion and French language schools, as well
as a private school, to design and implement MPBL across content
areas such as social studies and science. [2] Over a two-year period,
we worked with children in Grades 4-6 to produce collaborative
multimodal and multilingual books using English, French and
students’ home languages. Examples of students’ work can be
seen on the project website: www.iamplurilingual.com.
Across these school partnerships, five principles emerged
that can guide teachers and administrators seeking to cultivate a
multilingual orientation and to design collaborative multilingual
inquiry projects to enhance learning and to build social
understanding of linguistic diversity:
1
Draw
2
Invite
3
Group
on the diverse languages of the school community, including
but not limited to incorporating students’ home languages, local
Indigenous languages, and the language(s) of instruction. Even
if your student population does not include many speakers of
other languages, teachers can always incorporate Canada’s official
languages – English and French – local Indigenous languages
and other languages represented across the wider community.
Investigate language resources in your community so you can
cultivate a rich language ecology in your classroom.
parents, families and community members to contribute their
language and cultural expertise to help students bridge diverse
home, school and community language and literacy practices. Parents,
grandparents and other family members may be hesitant to volunteer
in a school where they don’t speak the language of the classroom. Invite
them in to share their languages and experience as multilingual role
models, not only for their children but also for the entire class.
students of different language backgrounds to work
collaboratively on content-based projects, as a context for
developing language and literacy skills along with content
knowledge and understanding. While having students who
speak different languages work together may seem counterproductive
at first, keep in mind that the goal is not that they
become fluent in all of the languages represented, but rather to
develop a welcoming curiosity about languages and one another.
4
Build
5
Publish
students’ metalinguistic awareness explicitly by actively
comparing different languages and how language(s) function, and
identifying patterns for cross-linguistic transfer. Draw students’
attention to how languages work and how they are related. Bridge
from what students already know in their home and community
languages to the language of instruction.
collaborative multilingual projects for authentic audiences
through an end-of-project celebration, and through the use of
technology to reach broader audiences. Celebrate students as creative,
multilingual producers rather than consumers. Plug into other schools,
community groups and families to share the multilingual work that
students generate to extend it beyond your classroom and to receive
feedback and inspiration to keep on.
Students’ reflections about themselves and their work speak to
the importance of inviting students’ languages into the classroom.
One student said about her group’s multilingual book, “No one
knew I can speak Swahili before. It’s like now they know me for
real.” Another student commented, “My work makes me feel
original. I am the only person in the class who can read and write
these three languages and that makes me special.” And yet another
student remarked, “Before this project, I never liked reading and
writing. Now I think I like it!” These powerful identity statements
highlight how supporting students’ use of their home languages
within the classroom increases their engagement; consequently,
they produce high-quality work in which they take pride.
Engaging parents
Beyond the students’ positive responses, teachers consistently
report that doing multilingual work with students shifts
how they see culturally and linguistically diverse parents.
MPBL creates an authentic opportunity to invite parents into
the classroom and the school as language and literacy experts.
This positioning of multilingual parents as having valuable
language expertise allows parents who might otherwise feel
marginalized because they don’t speak the language of the
classroom, to feel welcome into the school. Furthermore, when
teachers host celebration events to present students’ multilingual
work to their families, teachers have noted that they have greater
turnout and that in many cases, parents and extended family
members have come to the school for the very first time. As
one teacher explained, in reference to newcomer families:
“ I’ve seen a greater confidence of parents in school… the fact
that we valued their home language and culture within our
French class allowed parents to be involved in the learning of
French in some way. Even if it may seem paradoxical, the fact
that we purposefully drew on their family’s language created a
reassuring context for engaging in learning. They knew that we
were not trying to exclude their culture or their identity.”
8 CPF MAGAZINE WINTER 2020