November 3, 2023
by Mary Pat
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Does Your Classroom Feature These 8 Components Of A Positive Classroom Climate for Multilingual Children?

Last post in this series on how to support multilingual children in settings from day care to preschool to school! This time we are off to Spain where Khalfaoui and colleagues looked at 14 studies to get a handle on what … Continue reading

November 3, 2023
by Mary Pat
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5 Ways To Support Multilingual Children To Develop The School Language

Langaloo and colleagues in Holland looked at 31 studies of teacher-child interaction with multilingual children and how they compare with teacher-child interactions with monolingual children. Essentially, they conclude that where children have low skill levels in the school language, teachers … Continue reading

November 3, 2023
by Mary Pat
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How to support multilingual children in day care

In day-care settings, De Houwer and Pascal (2021) recommend that educators actively value all of the home languages. This doesn’t mean you have to know all of the languages or teach these languages in the day care setting. It does … Continue reading

September 30, 2023
by Mary Pat
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5 Linguistics-Based Ways To Support Multilingual Language Development In Preschool

I can’t believe it’s been SO long since I posted….life got in the way I’m afraid…too many balls in the air and not enough hands….planning to be back now though. So this is the 3rd post in the series about … Continue reading

November 10, 2022
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on 5 Ways To Support Home Languages in Early Childhood Interactions

5 Ways To Support Home Languages in Early Childhood Interactions

Welcome to the second post in the series about how early childhood educators can support multilingual children’s language development, especially the home languages. Remember how Zheng and colleagues in Australia looked at the research to find what works? Last time, … Continue reading

September 10, 2021
by Mary Pat
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Eight things to do when you’re worried that your child is struggling to read

And we’re back! Phyllis Jordan, my speech and language therapy colleague and friend have 8 tips for you if you’re worried about your child learning to read. In our first post, we shared 14 ways for helping your child learn … Continue reading

August 26, 2021
by Mary Pat
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14 Ways To Help Your Child Learn To Read

It’s that time of year again when school starts and we stumble through the first few days of getting back into a routine. Do you remember learning to read? I have a vague recollection of books about a boy and … Continue reading

April 21, 2021
by Mary Pat
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Learning to Read and Write in Two Or More Languages

This is a massive topic! There’s so much debate about methods and strategies and timing for learning to read and write. I’m not going to try and cover everything in this post or we’d be here forever! I’m just going … Continue reading

March 18, 2021
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on Does the speech & language therapist need to speak all of your languages?

Does the speech & language therapist need to speak all of your languages?

So your multilingual child is going to see a speech and language therapist (SLT) and you’re wondering if the SLT needs to be multilingual too. The short answer here is no. What the SLT needs to be is culturally competent. … Continue reading