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Building Bridges with Bilingual Books and Multicultural Resources: A Practical Manual of Lesson Plans, Literacy Games, and Fun Activities from Around the World to Celebrate Diversity in the Classroom Kindle Edition
Are you trying to build an inclusive and culturally responsive classroom? The numerous cross-curricular diversity activities, multicultural lesson plans, and literacy games in this book will save K-5 teachers and homeschooling parents hundreds of hours. Organized in an easy-to-use fashion, this manual will help educators to engage dual language learners and families, support the academic and social development of ESL students, and promote cultural awareness and understanding.
Written by a multicultural education expert and founder of www.LanguageLizard.com, this book provides the tools you need for culturally responsive teaching:
- Comprehensive Multicultural Lesson Plans that meet Common Core Standards and include accommodations for ESL students. Themes include:
- Cultural Awareness and Diversity
- Folktales, Fables, Myths, and Legends
- Holidays/Festivals
- 10 Diversity Activities Using Bilingual Books to Promote Literacy and Language Awareness.
- 10 Games from Around the World
- Foods and Crafts from Around the World
- Diverse Language Profiles
- Unique Holidays to Promote Multiculturalism and Literacy
- Community-Building Handouts (Includes "Hello in Different Languages" handout)
- Online Resources and Links
- Special Bonus Material
This book gives you the resources you need to embrace diversity in your educational environment.
"This is an amazing resource! . . . This book will be so useful to so many!" - Caia Schlessinger, President of NJTESOL/NJBE
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateDecember 2, 2019
- File size11.8 MB
Editorial Reviews
Review
Paige Dea, Kindergarten Teacher
From the Author
My co-author, Dr. Heather Leaman, works with practicing teachers in the Master's of Education program at West Chester University. While interacting with these teachers, she has seen firsthand the need for resources that support their efforts to successfully teach in diverse classrooms.
In 2006, Dr. Leaman and I began working together with her students to create lesson plans using dual language books. We developed a series of multicultural lesson plans that were offered as a free resource on the Language Lizard website. We found that bilingual books were an excellent resource for introducing languages and cultures to children. As teachers used the books and lesson plans to introduce cultures, holidays, and languages of the minority children to the rest of the class, the children felt recognized and included. It helped to boost their self-esteem and pride in their unique heritage. Similarly, the non-minority children developed a greater understanding and appreciation of the "differences" of their classmates.
After seeing how well our multicultural lesson plans were received, and reviewing the trove of ideas developed over the years, I decided to embark on this book. My aim was to develop an easy-to-use resource that would help teachers and families to develop culturally responsive classrooms and homes.
This book includes numerous ideas and resources to help educators teach students about other cultures and languages. Although some of the activities are best for classroom settings, many can be adapted for use in homeschooling environments or recommended to families who are trying to maintain a heritage language. Readers can skim the resources in the table of contents and then easily reference the sections that are most helpful at any particular time. I sincerely hope that this book will help you teach children about other cultures and languages and respond to the needs of the multicultural classroom, while meeting federal and state teaching requirements.
From the Back Cover
Multicultural education expert Anneke Vanmarcke Forzani gives you the tools to...
- Build culturally responsive classrooms
- Create positive connections with dual language children & families
- Teach children about other languages & cultures
- Support literacy development among English language learners
- Foster a welcoming and inclusive learning environment
About the Author
Anneke Vanmarcke Forzani is the President and Founder of Language Lizard LLC (www.languagelizard.com), which provides multicultural resources in over 50 languages to schools, libraries, and literacy organizations. She has presented workshops about using multicultural resources to support culturally responsive teaching at educational conferences. Anneke also writes about multicultural issues online and manages the blog Supporting Multicultural Classrooms & Bilingual Families at blog.languagelizard.com. Her mission is to support the academic and social development of dual language learners and help build a generation of culturally aware and understanding global citizens. Anneke has worked in the US and Japan and speaks Dutch, French, and Japanese. She is the author of the forthcoming bilingual children's book, Happy After All.
Dr. Heather Leaman works with pre-service teachers focusing on social studies in the elementary grades. She also works with practicing teachers in the Master's of Education program at West Chester University, and coordinates their M.Ed program in Applied Studies in Teaching and Learning, supporting teachers as they conduct classroom-based research. Prior to this, Dr. Leaman spent 11 years teaching sixth grade in a Pennsylvania public school. Dr. Leaman's initial interest in using bilingual resources emerged during her work with middle school students who brought rich language and cultural diversity to the school where she worked.
Edmond Gubbins and co-author Ellen O-Regan teach elementary school in Ireland. They have Bachelor of Education degrees from Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, Ireland, and Master's of Education degrees from West Chester University in Pennsylvania. They have a keen interest in multiculturalism and fostering an appreciation for diversity in their students.
Product details
- ASIN : B0829D5YLZ
- Publisher : Language Lizard, LLC; 1st edition (December 2, 2019)
- Publication date : December 2, 2019
- Language : English
- File size : 11.8 MB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 238 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 1951787005
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,041,612 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,104 in Bilingual Education Methods
- #1,200 in Curricula (Kindle Store)
- #1,239 in Multicultural Education Methods
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.
Anneke Vanmarcke Forzani is the President and Founder of Language Lizard (www.languagelizard.com), which provides multicultural resources in over 50 languages to schools, libraries, and literacy organizations. She has presented workshops about using multicultural resources in diverse classrooms at educational conferences. She also writes about multicultural issues online and manages the blog Supporting Multicultural Classrooms & Bilingual Families at blog.languagelizard.com. Anneke speaks Dutch, French, and Japanese. She is the author of the teacher's manual Building Bridges with Bilingual Books and Multicultural Resources and the children's books, Happy After All, With Flying Colors: Color Idioms, and Who Are We? All of those books are available in multiple bilingual editions. She loves hiking, cycling, skiing, and spending quality time with her husband and four sons.
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Anneke Vanmarcke Forzani es la Presidenta Fundadora de Language Lizard (www.languagelizard.com), empresa que provee recursos multiculturales en mas de 50 idiomas a escuelas, bibliotecas y organizaciones de alfabetización. Anneke ha otorgado seminarios y cursos de recursos multiculturales en diversas organizaciones y presentado conferencias educacionales en Estados Unidos. También cuenta con un blog y escribe acerca de los problemas que presentan las familias bilingües y los salones de clases que cuentan con diferentes grupos culturales "Supporting Multicultural Classrooms & Bilingual Families" blog.languagelizard.com. Anneke habla varios idiomas, Holandés, Frances y Japones. Recientemente escribió un libro para niños llamado "Happy After all" que saldrá próximamente a la venta y sera traducido en varios idiomas. Anneke disfruta hacer caminatas, paseos en bicicleta, esquiar y pasar tiempo de calidad en familia con su esposo y sus cuatro hijos.
Customer reviews
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- Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2019My husband and I are raising our children in a bilingual household and we love how this book promotes multiculturalism and bilingualism. It provides real (practical and doable) tools to use at our home. Also, I work at an organization that provides childcare and after school childcare and I can envision this book helping to make the classroom activities more inclusive. I am definitely going to share it with our teachers who I am sure will love it too!!
- Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2019We live in a very diverse community and I have read many of Language Lizard’s bilingual books to my kids over the years to help my children understand and appreciate the cultural differences of their friends and neighbors. This book gave me a lot of new ideas! I plan on sharing this book with their teachers and other moms who are trying to build cultural awareness and empathy in their kids.
- Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2019This book not only offers a ton of lesson plans built around different languages and cultures, but it provides some great background into the benefits of diversity in the classroom. As a former ESL teacher, this book will be useful to classroom teachers who need ideas for lesson planning. It's very user friendly and straightforward. Great book!
- Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2020I was gifted a copy of this book to review for multicultural children’s book day by Anneke Vanmarcke Forzani, and Language Lizard, LLC.
I found this book to be an insightful and needed educational resource. It begins by talking about the increasing diversity in American schools, and the challenges and discrimination minority students often face. For example, it talks about how some educators may devalue a child’s dual language abilities, rather than viewing them as an asset. Other educators may fail to reach out to immigrant parents and engage them in their child’s educational experience, often due to communication difficulties.
This book provides teachers with resources to help them create an inclusive learning environment that accepts differences and celebrates diversity. There’s a whole section on multicultural lesson plans, with fun themes including folktales and holidays. The lesson plans utilize multicultural picture books highlighting various cultures, and they include games, discussion ideas, activities, and tips for accommodations/differentiation.
There is also a section with activities and games that teachers and parents can use to support multiculturalism. One of the activity suggestions I liked was to have a teacher read a book out loud at school in the school language, and have the parents read the same book at home in their home language. There are also fun games from around the world, multicultural crafts, and international recipes you can try at school or at home.
All in all, I thought this was a great resource for teachers and parents with some excellent information and resources to promote multiculturalism, diversity, and inclusion.