Use Visual Cues, Physical Gestures, Props, and Multimedia: Video
This multimodal resource from the Multilingual Learning Toolkit introduces strategies that educators can use to support early multilingual learners (MLL) in their classroom. The video embedded in the resource primarily highlights translanguaging and offers educators practical ideas for implementation. These ideas include using visual cues like picture walks, being intentional about physical gestures and nonverbal communication choices, and implementing props and multimedia resources in students’ home and school languages. The underlying goal of the video is to assist educators in helping students make associations with the language they are learning. To support the video, additional resources on multiple modalities and open- and closed-ended questions are listed. The multiple modalities resource offers examples, such as sentence patterning, to help teachers explicitly teach words through oral and other modalities like writing, speaking, and listening. The open- and closed-ended questions resource offers examples—like describe, draw, describe—to help teachers learn strategies that get PreK-TK students to talk.