Session 2 Workshop 2

Gillian: Has worked as a primary school EAL/D teacher and as an EAL/D  consultant for the NSW Department of Education in south-western Sydney. She has taught at the University of Sydney, where she completed her PhD in 2018, researching Storytelling in a Multilingual Community. Her current research interests include the use of home languages in the classroom, and multilingual ecologies which support English language learning. She is currently working as a freelance EAL/D consultant and research assistant, most recently with Macquarie University where she is part of a team examining pre-service teachers’ knowledge of language. She is a member and past president of ATESOL NSW.

Kim Cootes: Has extensive experience as a primary classroom teacher, EAL/D teacher, Refugee Student Support Officer and as an Assistant Principal EAL/D – Refugee with the NSW Department of Education. She has worked in western and south western Sydney schools most of her career. Kim has been a passionate advocate for supporting the significant educational and wellbeing needs of newly arrived refugee students and their families. She has lead teachers to: develop an understanding of the acquisition of second language and EAL/D pedagogy; supported teachers to identify the language and cultural demands of the curriculum as well as to design learning that promotes opportunities for developing English language through the curriculum. She is particularly interested in using quality, rich texts to design learning that develops oral language skills in English to enhance reading and writing. Kim has contributed to a number of PETAA publications including “Talking the Talk, Snapshots from Australian Classrooms” and “Tell Me Your Story, Confirming identity and engaging writers in the middle years.” Although officially retired, Kim is currently working with students to develop their language and literacy skills.

Multilingual Storyboxes: Promoting Home Languages in Early Childhood Classrooms

This workshop will describe how a program of storytelling can contribute to the development of a multilingual ecology within early childhood classrooms. Research indicates that by recognising students’ home languages and cultural knowledge as resources for learning in the classroom, teachers validate students’ identities and provide a strong foundation for their success. Multilingual Storyboxes used as a classroom resource provide opportunities for young learners to use their own voice, in their own languages, to respond to and create stories that reflect the knowledge and experiences of their homes and communities.

Workshop participants will be introduced to practical examples of ways to recognise and celebrate students’ cultural skills and understandings through story. They will also learn about the theory that informs the contents of Multilingual Storyboxes: the core texts and related toys, the craft materials, dress-ups, and the teaching and online resources to support and extend students’ understanding of English and their home languages.

To illustrate the use of the boxes in schools, we will report on our recent research which examined the potential of such storytelling to build upon young EAL/D students’ language and literacy learning. The results – the creation of their own class book – encouraged students and their families to see their ‘funds of knowledge’ as resources for learning in the classroom, thus validating their identities as capable English language learners.

The workshop is primarily for EAL/D specialists and classroom teachers of young children. The authors developed the Storyboxes when employed as EAL/D and Refugee consultants in SW Sydney, where the resource was successfully employed in primary schools with students from K-6. In our experience teachers are keen to welcome students’ languages and cultural practices into schools, but are unsure how to go about it, especially when so many languages are represented within one class. We hope that by attending this workshop teachers will understand relevant theories behind the Storybox pedagogy and will feel more confident to use students’ cultural and linguistic resources to enhance their language and literacy programs.