Guided Drawing With Multilingual Preschoolers

Drawing provides opportunities for children to communicate their thoughts even when they do not have the vocabulary or the English proficiency to fully explain their ideas. This practical guide presents foundational information on the role of drawing in vocabulary development. The authors describe a research-based intervention designed to support and expand young multilingual learners’ experiences with content area vocabulary. They provide teaching examples from several content area investigations carried out in Head Start contexts serving multilingual students. These vignettes, accompanied by student work samples and excerpts of dialogue, will help early childhood educators effectively integrate this pedagogical approach into their classrooms. The user-friendly text includes curriculum support materials such as lesson-planning templates and lists of recommended children’s literature and media. Guided Drawing With Multilingual Preschoolers shows teachers how to use guided drawing in conjunction with established practices to help all young students develop language and content knowledge, particularly in science.

Book Features:

• An innovative pedagogical intervention that was created by the authors to use in Head Start classrooms.
• An actionable approach to teaching content area vocabulary in the classroom that works with young multilingual learners.
• Tables with quick summaries of developmental milestones and teaching points.
• Guidance for early educators who understand the importance of building word and world knowledge in authentic ways while children are learning English.
• Teaching examples that highlight language-rich interactions and strategies for supporting multilingual learners.
• Curriculum connections to culturally relevant children’s literature, media, and high-quality informational texts.

Christina M. Cassano is a professor in the Department of Childhood Education and Care at Salem State University. Kathleen A. Paciga is an associate professor of education in the Department of Humanities, History, and Social Sciences at Columbia College Chicago.

“Children in today’s multilingual/multicultural preschool and kindergarten classrooms will flourish if their teachers read this eye-opening and amazingly informative masterpiece.”
—Judith A. Schickedanz, professor emerita, Boston University

“This book draws our attention to the naturally occurring but underutilized language and conceptual knowledge development opportunities that transpire when multilingual preschool children engage in drawing as an act of meaning-making. The authors provide powerful examples of guided-drawing interactions that extend children’s emerging second-language abilities as they engage in rich interactive conversations and translanguaging experiences with a linguistically responsive adult. This book is relevant for anyone who designs language and literacy instruction for linguistically diverse learners, with specific recommendations for how directed thematic drawing can expand preschool children’s word and world knowledge within an asset-based multilingual conceptual framework.”
—Sharolyn D. Pollard-Durodola, professor of English language learning, University of Nevada, Las Vegas