10 Tips on Celebrating Cultural Diversity in the Classroom this Winter Season

by LANGUAGELIZARD

Santa Lucia celebration

As the days shorten and the weather turns cold and crisp, families are warming up with their winter holiday celebrations. Candles, lights, sweets and gifts highlight this time of year in many cultures around the world.

Although celebrating specific religious traditions is not permitted in most classrooms in America, there is no reason for teachers to avoid winter holidays all together. In fact, teaching about winter traditions can be a wonderful way to help bilingual children, in particular, feel even more comfortable and included in the classroom setting. The overall focus should be on helping students appreciate both the diversity and similarities of our global traditions.

Here are 10 suggestions for how teachers can help students appreciate winter holidays from around the world:

• Student participation: Give students the opportunity to participate by asking them how they are celebrating this time of year at home with their families. You can use this as a springboard for talking about a shorter list of winter celebrations or you can aim to focus on all of the traditions represented in class by discussing each in more depth.
• Hands-on lessons: When teaching students about different winter holidays, find as many easy hands-on activities as possible – it makes learning even more fun and memorable. Here is an example of a fun lesson plan that incorporates five different countries and celebrations. It isn’t necessary that all activities be done in the classroom. What is important is that students come away with an appreciation for why each activity is meaningful to each culture.
• Get parents involved: Encourage parents to bring in items from their celebrations to share with the class. Parents and/or students can show the class how different items are used and why they are so special and important to the celebration. Traditional clothing and foods can also be brought to highlight a given holiday.
• Read about it: Try to find at least one book to read out loud for each of the celebrations you are covering in class. Best are books that include the holiday from a child’s point of view since it gives students the chance to experience the holiday in a more personal way. For students who celebrate the holiday, ask them how the story compares to their own celebrations at home.
• Connect globally: If you have the resources, see if you can find ways to get your students more directly connected with students from other parts of the world. Contact schools in other countries ahead of time to decide what kinds of exchanges would be possible. Some schools might be able to connect with your class via Skype while others might prefer exchanging hand-made cards or postcards.
• Community involvement: A wonderful way to make our holiday celebrations more meaningful is to get the community involved. This might mean inviting people from the community to your classroom so that they can talk about a given holiday, or it may mean taking students on a field trip to local community events or locations. Reaching out to older members of our community during this cold time of year can also be a wonderful way to get students involved.
• Personal Experiences: It is important that students understand that not everyone celebrates the same holiday the same way. For example, some families may celebrate Christmas by focusing on religious events and traditions, while others may celebrate the holiday in more secular ways. Create opportunities for students to talk about these differences, emphasizing that our individual ways of celebrating is what makes the holiday especially meaningful and unique for each of us.
• Winter Solstice Countdown: Students can have a great time counting down the days together until winter solstice (December 21^st). Keep track of the time of the sunrise and sunset each day, noting how the amount of sunlight decreases and the days get shorter and shorter. Students can also keep track of where the sun is on the horizon at a specific time of day each day. Even if students aren’t in school on the winter solstice itself, it is a fun way to help students notice the changes in their natural environment.
• Different Hemispheres: It is possible that students have not yet learned that while it is winter where they live, it is summer where many others live. Use this time of year to help students understand what the northern and southern hemispheres are by using a globe and a flashlight. Talk about what families in the southern hemisphere might be doing right now and how different their celebrations might be where they are living. While we are enjoying sled-rides and hot chocolate, they are sunning themselves on the beach!
• Simple activities: A wonderful way for your class to experience this time of year is with simple activities that are performed in class each day. For example, you might decorate the class with a string of lights, turning them on each morning at the beginning of class. Or for classes with older children, you might light a candle that stays lit during the first lessons. Establishing some simple, general activities like these can make this cold time of year feel just that much warmer in your classroom.

Students are most likely bubbling with excitement about the coming winter break from school and their family’s holiday preparations. Helping students celebrate this time of year as a whole is a wonderful way to bring everyone together.

There are so many overarching similarities between winter holiday traditions: candles, special foods, gifts, spending time with loved ones. Emphasizing these similarities while also highlighting the differences can help students appreciate the diversity that our global cultures bring to our lives during this cold time of year.

Photo credit: EandJsFilmCrew

Which winter holidays will you be teaching your students this year?

You might also like:

Thanksgiving and Immigrant Cultures

Bilingual Children: Make Storytime Their Favorite Time of ...

Traditions Around the World: Celebrate Autumn

Bilingual Students: Preparing for the Coming School Year

Bilingual Book Review: Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Top Ten Games to Play with Bilingual Children’s Books

by LANGUAGELIZARD on DECEMBER 4, 2013 

Using flash cards and rote learning to teach an additional language is like looking at pictures of a turkey dinner instead of sitting down to eat the wonderful meal.  There are so many more interesting ways to experience learning and using a new language! And bilingual books are a great place to start.

In April of this year, ScienceDaily.com ran an article supporting what we already know: “playing simple games using words and pictures can help people to learn a new language with greater ease”.  This type of informal learning is “effortless” and supports the retention of the new language “even days afterwards”, according to the quoted study from the University of Nottingham. It makes practical sense too — we all know that we learn better when we’re having fun and not putting too much pressure on ourselves to retain information.

Looking for some inspiration to get involved in informal learning using bilingual books you already have in your library or some you’ve got your eye on for Christmas?  Look no further!  We’ve even grouped our Top Ten Activities according to levels of proficiency in the additional language needed to complete them (the level needed is higher as the numbers go up).

1) Charades

This classic game works really well to help cement children’s understanding of the bilingual books they’ve recently read.  Little ones can choose a favorite character from the story to act out with gestures and no words.  However, to really improve their vocabulary, choosing objects from the book for their peers to identify in the additional language will certainly push them one step further without them realizing they’re doing any language-learning work at all!

2) You Be the Star

For the next activity, let the children choose a favorite scene from the bilingual book they’re reading and act it out for each other.  They should use as many words in the new language as they can to get across the main idea, even if they’re not using dialogue and narrative lifted straight from the page.

3) Key Word Shuffle

This one is a real vocabulary-builder! Using spare index cards you have lying around your classroom or home, or even squares of construction paper, list a number of key words in the new language from the bilingual book you’ve chosen.  For example, the story of Cinderella might produce key words like “prince”, “pumpkin”, “glass slipper”, and “sweep”.  Shuffle the cards and let the children choose them at random, then find the page in the book that contains that word.

4) Scavenger Hunt

Have a little bit more time on your hands and a few more resources at your disposal?  Build on the Key Word Shuffle by allowing little ones to search for bilingual treasure!  They can use index cards with words in the language they’re learning as clues to find objects from a story in the home or classroom.  Maybe you’re reading a bilingual version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears — tots can hunt for chairs, bowls, or even a box of instant porridge!

5) Memory Game

Kids love puzzles at any age, and this quick game will challenge their memories and the language they’ve learned so far.  It’s simple: copy the pages of the bilingual story you’re reading, shuffle them, and ask the children to put them back in order without looking at the book.  For children who need a little more support, you could always copy only a few of the most important pages from the plot, and if your little ones are a bit more advanced, let them try the whole thing.

6) Pictionary

It’s fun; it’s fast-paced; it focuses children’s minds on new-language vocabulary they’re learning! Just like in the game show you remember from the ’90s, in our version you use key words and phrases from bilingual stories your children are familiar with.  The twist is that they must guess in their additional language! The competitive element will add a frisson and keep kids involved in their own learning long after they’ve shut their books for the day.

7) Puppet Show

Looking for a way to combine arts and crafts and bilingual learning?  Our puppet show activity really ticks both boxes.  Children can spend time making creative puppets (like the ones found on this website, perhaps) to represent characters from the book they’re reading before using them to act out a scene with lines of memorized dialogue in their additional language. If they’re working on this project in school, it would be a great one to take home and show their loved ones what they’ve learned too!

8) The Post-it Note Game

If you’ve got some sticky notes, a pen, and a bilingual children’s book, then you’ve got the ingredients for this game.  Our version requires a little bit more knowledge of the new language but it’s great fun once your little ones have advanced to this level!  All you need to do is write the names of characters (or objects- to make it even more challenging!) from the story onto post-its and stick them to the foreheads of your players so they can only read the stickies of the people at whom they’re looking and not their own.  They then ask yes-or-no questions to try to figure out “who” they are, such as, “Am I a girl or a boy? Do I have dark hair?  Do I climb a beanstalk? Am I bigger than everyone else in the story?”  Of course, the higher their level of proficiency, the better questions they can ask, adding to the fun of the game.

9) Hot Seating

A complex role-playing game, this will really test your little learners’ vocabulary.  To play, children take turns performing as a character from the bilingual book they’ve most recently read, while the others ask them questions about how they felt at different points in the story.  As in the Post-It Note Game, the better their skills in their new language, the better the questions they can ask, and the deeper they can go exploring the emotions and characters in the text.  For instance, if students are reading Marek and Alice’s Christmas, they can use the additional language to ask questions like “How did you feel about visiting Poland for Christmas?”  “What were you expecting Christmas to be like?”  “Why do you like spending time with your babcia?”  “What was your favorite part of Christmas?”  Let the kids be creative with this one — a little poetic license is a good thing — but the closer they can stay to the text the more they’ll be reinforcing what they’ve already learned.

10) What Happens Next?

The end of a really good story is always a bit disappointing — you wish the author had carried on!  In our final game, your children can help her do just that by adding an epilogue or sequel to the bilingual book you’ve read.  Learners will obviously need to be able to use their new language to a high level to get involved in this activity, but even a very simple continuation of the story can be fun, satisfying, and an effortless way to reinforce bilingual skills.

Of course this is just a small selection of the great games many teachers and parents use every day to support their kids’ bilingualism, even when they don’t realize they’re doing it!  Maybe you’ve got some ideas up your sleeve.  Why not post them in our comments section and share the joy of informal language learning?

You might also like:

Book Review: Augustus and his Smile

Bilingual Books Open up a World of Communication and ...

What’s the Real Home Language Story? Making your Head Start ...

World Folktales and Fables: Effective Teaching Tools ...

Dual Language Books Benefit Bilingual Children

Using holiday celebrations to promote language development in multicultural classrooms

Bilingual Students: Using Holiday Celebrations to Promote Language Development in Multicultural Classrooms

by LANGUAGELIZARD 

Now that the New Year has arrived and school is back in full swing, students are sure to be filled brimming with enthusiastic stories of what they did during their winter holiday. Ice skating in the park, opening gifts at the fireplace, lighting candles in beautifully wrought candelabras are just a few  activities that children might share with an overjoyed twinkle in their eye. How could they not?!

As we all know first-hand, getting students to engage in conversations works best when they are inspired and excited about the topic.  This is particularly true of bilingual students, especially those who may still be mastering the community language. What better time than now to get your bilingual students talking with you and one another? Their minds are so full of wonderful memories from the holidays, they will most likely want to share as much as possible.

Here are 5 tips on how to help your students direct their holiday excitement into fun language opportunities:

• Mini Circle Chats:  Have your students sit together in circles of 4-5 students each. They can either go around the circle to share their favorite memories from their winter holiday, or they can pick out names from a jar to decide who goes next. If your students are reluctant to talk in a group setting, give them a list of fun questions that encourage more than single-word answers. Let students know that they can engage in discussions together as a group. This will give them the opportunity to talk about their similar or different holiday activities and celebrations.  If you have a very diverse classroom, ensure that each circle includes a mix of cultures so that children can experience a variety of traditions.

• Word Play: Ask students to write 5-10 words (in any language) that relate to their winter holiday. Have each student share one of their words with the class. Ask the student to explain why he or she chose to write down that word. Does it represent a feeling or an event that took place during the winter holiday? Find out how many other students wrote down the same word and why they wrote down that word. Go around the classroom so that each student shares at least one word from their list and discusses why they chose to write it and share it with the class.

• Memory Drawings: Have students start by drawing some of their favorite memories from their holidays on a piece of paper. Let them draw as many or as few things as they want. Then have them present their picture to others at their table (or to the whole classroom), explaining the different elements of their picture. Make sure to allow each child to finish their picture presentation before allowing other students to ask questions and share their thoughts.

• Wall Mural: Rather than having students do individual pictures, spread out a long piece of paper and have students draw their holiday memories at the same time! Encourage them to draw as many memories as they want. When the time is up, hang the mural up on the wall and let everyone spend a good amount of time looking at it up close and talking about it. Eventually you can have the students sit down on the floor in front of the mural and talk as a group about what they see and what thoughts come to their minds.

• Multicultural Traditions:  Have students sit together in a circle. Start the conversation by asking a student to share one of their winter holiday traditions. Have the student explain how their family celebrates the tradition. Then ask others in the circle if they also participate in the tradition with their family and if so, whether or not they celebrate it in the same way. Once one tradition has been discussed, ask students to share another winter holiday tradition. Help students notice that not everyone has the same tradition during the winter holiday season and that even the same traditions can be celebrated in different ways.

They joy of having students talk about their favorite winter holiday memories helps to make the transition back to the classroom lively and joyful. It also helps everyone remember and appreciate the wonderful diversity of our bilingual students’ multicultural celebrations and traditions during the winter holiday season. The excitement with which children share their favorite memories is sure to make the first few days and weeks in class memorable events themselves!