Supporting Language Acquisition and Peer Interaction Through Guided Play in a Multilingual Classroom

Abstract

103 Vol. 26, No. 2, June 2023 YOUNG EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN https://doi.org/10.1177/10962506211042346 DOI: 10.1177/10962506211042346 journals.sagepub.com/home/yec Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions © 2021 Division for Early Childhood Carmen, a 3-year-old girl, recently moved with her parents from the Dominican Republic to Boston, Massachusetts. Carmen’s home language is Spanish, and she had limited opportunities to listen to or practice American English before she started preschool in Ms. Hannah’s Head Start classroom. Because of the limited exposure to English and moving to a new country, Carmen feels shy around other children, and she stays to herself for the majority of the day, until her parents pick her up. Ms. Hannah’s classroom represents multiple home languages and cultures, such as Haitian Creole, Mandarin, and Somali. Children in the classroom mostly speak in English with each other and the school’s staff. As Ms. Hannah is a monolingual native English speaker, she responds to all children, including Carmen, mainly in English. However, Ms. Hannah implements linguistically responsive practices (e.g., uses 3–5 survival words, such as “Good morning” or “Thank you” in each child’s home language, provides bilingual story time, or uses role-play to have children practice asking simple questions) to support children to reach their full potential. Children who continue to develop their home language skills, also known as primary language (e.g., Spanish; L1), while learning a 1042346 YECXXX10.1177/10962506211042346Young Exceptional ChildrenPeer Interaction for Children Who Are DLLs / Bohr and Acar research-article2021