1st Edition
Teaching Multilingual Students Through Culture and Language An Elementary Teacher’s Guide to Self-Discovery Using Semiotics
This book serves as a professional development guide designed for elementary school teachers to help them center multilingual and bilingual students’ language and culture in the classroom by recognizing and harnessing their students’ assets through semiotics and self-discovery. Its purpose is to promote compassionate education, fostering empathy and connection to students’ identities in response to the known problem of student disengagement and the challenges in teaching reading and writing.
The guide showcases planned and tested modules to facilitate student success in diverse learning environments, and each module includes resources, sample lesson plans, and hands-on experiences designed to help students find joy in learning. Emphasizing strategies intended for learners with varied abilities and interests, this book focuses on students’ identities and cultures as they are related to race, language, heritage, and semiotics. It is an ideal resource for in-service elementary school teachers interested in incorporating culturally responsive teaching practices into their classrooms, as well as for preservice teachers who want to focus on students’ cultures, languages, and assets. Teachers, students, and the student community share the joy of knowledge together through this guide.
1. A New Day for Education: A Guide Toward Self-Discovery 2. Self-Discovery Through the Linguistic Mode: Idioms, Identity Text, and Storytelling 3. Self-Discovery Through the Visual Mode: Examining Customs and Traditions and Visual Knowledge 4. Self-Discovery Through the Audio Mode: Examining Language Using Music Genres 5. Self-Discovery Through the Spatial Mode: Connecting Local to Global 6. Self-Discovery Through the Gestural Mode: Examining Gestures in the Classroom 7. Self-Discovery Through the Synesthesia Mode: Examining Culture Through Local Historical Figures
Biography
Tala Michelle Karkar-Esperat is Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education and Technology at Eastern New Mexico University. Her research is focused on preservice teachers' literacies, online literacies, coaching of teachers, and pedagogical literacy practices through multiliteracies, new literacies, and semiotics.
"Tala Karkar-Esperat is a committed teacher educator who brings together important new frameworks for the critical reshaping of languages, literacies and multiliteracies in the classroom. This is a significant and valuable practical resource for teachers, for teacher educators and scholars working with kids of diverse languages, cultures and communities."
Allan Luke, Emeritus Professor, Queensland University of Technology, Australia"Student engagement fosters persistence when learning becomes challenging and supports academic risk-taking. Teaching Multilingual Students Through Culture and Language presents teachers with a theoretical framework and practical guidance for tapping their learners’ language repertoires to promote literacy development across reading, writing, listening, speaking, and viewing. Teachers and their learners will engage in self-discovery across language domains and across cultures, creating an inclusive learning context through the lesson examples provided."
Pamela A. Mason, Ed.D., Senior Lecturer, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Co-Chair, Literacy and Languages Concentration, USA"This book is a highly imaginative application of the MultiSemiotic framework to various learning contexts. The original ideas presented in the book will give impetus to new research and practice. It is an important contribution to knowledge, and a welcome addition to the growing literature on multimodalities and social semiotics in learning."
Professor Li Wei, Director and Dean, UCL Institute of Education, UK"It is a revolutionary approach to learning. It is both exciting and inspirational for both teachers and students by letting students lead. It provides self-discovery and knowledge which is essential to preparing students to be the best they can be."
William Cass, MLA, MS, Retired Drama Instructor, USA
