Assignment task:
The questions below draw from the two CUNY translanguaging principles. Reflecting on these questions will help you consider ways to create an environment that welcomes and supports translanguaging and builds a community of writers. The goal of this action is to identify areas with respect to the environment that need to be strengthened and/or developed.
Principle #1: Support of a multilingual ecology for the whole school.
- What opportunities do students have to use home language during writing activities that take place in your classroom?
- How are other languages visible, palpable in the writing landscape of the classroom? What does the language landscape of your classroom look like? Does it represent the language practices of the students in your classroom?
- How do different texts support, enhance, nurture and challenge the imagination of the writer's language practices and cultural experiences at the school? How do the texts support multiplicity of voices and deeper thinking?
Principle # 2: Bilingualism as a resource in education
- Who are my students? What are their languaging practices? What strengths do they bring? How do I capitalize and build on these?
- In what ways are the writing-language practices of ALL my students not only recognized but also leveraged as a crucial instructional tool? Do I explicitly state in my classroom that students can/should utilize their entire linguistic repertoire in order to fully participate in the writing engagements?
- How do I address these varied language practices in my teaching of writing? What resources do I provide? How do I structure the class so that they can engage their entire linguistic repertoire? What adaptations do I need to provide to the writing tools we use? In what ways do the resources I provide support, nurture and challenge the students' entire linguistic repertoire? How are their home language practices nurtured and developed?
- How are the students' entire linguistic repertoires leveraged flexibly and strategically in writing instruction, so that they are engaged cognitively, academically, emotionally and creatively?
- How do I support students in gaining fluency in working across language differences? How do I create an awareness in students that each time they use language, they are gaining new insights?
- How do I create spaces for authentic audiences? How do these offer genuine translanguaging spaces?