I attended a great session today on early English language learners and what we can do as a library system to support these children. This program focuses on storytimes (or any programs) in a child's native language and why this is so important.
Key points:
-Stick to one language during program. Don't switch back and forth, for instance between
Spanish and English as this is cognitively taxing for young children.
-Remember to reinforce native language as important even as children are learning English as
the "acceptable" language.
This is very applicable to CML as we are already presenting programs in languages other than English. Hopefully, what I gained from this session can be used for future programming.
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2 comments:
When you write that one of their key points was: "Stick to one language during program. Don't switch back and forth, for instance between Spanish and English as this is cognitively taxing for young children."
Doesn't this go against what we are currently doing in bilingual storytimes? (Which I have shadowed, and felt are extremely popular and effective).
Also... as youth service librarians, how can we introduce a new language to children without taking the bilingual storytime approach?
I would be interested in seeing more research about this...
Lisa Dickson
The handouts from the presentation can be found on the PLA website and they are very informative.
When they were talking about sticking to one language and not switching back and forth between two they just meant not to read one page of a book in say Spanish and then read the next in English.
From the handout is this information:
Dual language education indicates that children learn two languages best when they are kept seperate.
Examples:
Read the book entirely in the target language and then discuss the book in English, if everyone at the storytime also speaks English.
Even when using books with bilingual text on each page, do not read the story that way. Stick with the target language throughout the entire book.
There is a lot of research and other examples included in the handouts.
I am very interested in early literacy for English language learners and plan to attend one of our bilingual storytimes very soon.
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