
In this episode, we have a conversation with Dr. Koryne Nnoli from Morgan State University about how early childhood educators can use strategies to support multilingual learners in their classrooms where many languages are spoken.

More About Our Guest
Koryne Carroll Nnoli, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Exceptional Education at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. Her research focuses on inclusive practices, technology integration, and family-school partnerships for students with disabilities and their families. Through her federally-funded work, Project QUEST, Dr. Nnoli is developing early childhood and elementary/middle degree programs training teachers in urban areas in inclusive practices to support students with disabilities. Dr. Nnoli has worked in inclusive early childhood settings and across the lifespan with individuals with disabilities for over 15 years. She was awarded as a Children’s Book International Finalist for the 2023 American Writing Awards for her book “Little Like Me”. She is the author of peer-reviewed publications including a 2024 Teaching Young Children article titled: “Embracing Linguistic Diversity to Support Multilingual Learners.”
Podcast
Transcript
Intro: Thanks for joining us for a podcast from the Illinois Early Learning Project. Our project is part of the Department of Special Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and funded by the Illinois State Board of Education. On this podcast, we share information about how young children grow and learn as well as strategies adults can use to help them thrive. My name is Natalie Danner.
Natalie Danner: Welcome to the Illinois Early Learning Podcast. Today, we are talking about young multilingual children in the classroom, and we are joined by Dr. Nnoli, welcome.
Koryne Nnoli: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m glad to be able to come here today.
Natalie Danner: We’re so happy to have you join us today. Koryne Carroll Nnoli, Phd., is an assistant professor of Exceptional Education at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. Her research focuses on inclusive practices, technology integration, and family school partnerships for students with disabilities and their families. Through her federally funded work, Project Quest, Dr. Nnoli is developing early childhood and elementary middle degree programs, training teachers in urban areas in inclusive practices to support students with disabilities. Dr. Nnoli has worked in inclusive early childhood settings and across the lifespan with individuals with disabilities for over 15 years. She was awarded as a Children’s Book International Finalist for the 2023 American Writing Awards for her book, Little Like Me. She is the author of peer-reviewed publications, including a 2024 Teaching Young Children article titled “Embracing Linguistic Diversity to Support Multilingual Learners.” I’m excited to get into our topic about multilingual learners with you. Let’s talk about the population of children that we have in our classroom today. So, teachers often have children in their classroom who speak a variety of languages other than English. In fact, up to a quarter of children in preschool settings are multilingual learners according to the US Census. You’ve had the opportunity to teach in a classroom like this. Can you talk a little bit about your experience? Tell us about your classroom, your teaching team, and some of the children that may have been enrolled.
Koryne Nnoli: Sure. So, when I was teaching in a preschool inclusive classroom, I had a class of ten students and myself as a lead teacher along with two assistants. And so, in that class there were actually four out of the ten students who had their home language as Spanish. One of those spoke Yiddish at home, and then for the assistants in the classroom, one also spoke Yiddish, and another spoke Hindi. So, we had a lot of different languages represented in our classroom. Not only with the students, but with the staff that were supporting them. So that was really important for me to include all of those different languages and cultures in the classroom. And so yeah, we really did a big effort with trying to include everyone’s languages and culture in our class.
Natalie Danner: Wonderful. Now, what if a teacher doesn’t speak the language that the children speak? What are some strategies that teachers can use to connect and engage with multilingual children in their own classrooms.
Koryne Nnoli: Sure. Well, we always encourage teachers to collaborate with families. Families are always communicating and speaking with their little ones, and so we always encourage teachers to talk with the parents, ask them, what are they teaching, or how are they speaking or communicating in their home language. Now the thing is, some families, even though they may have a Hispanic background or a background from some other language, it’s their personal choice not to use that language at home. So, what I have found is that some families just want to encourage their children to speak English, and so when they come into the classroom you might find that you actually are trying to speak a language like Spanish to them, and their family is not even using that. So, I would say, first of all, speak to the family, ask the family, what are they speaking at home? What is their home language? Are they encouraging their children to speak their home language and be multilingual language learners? Or are they encouraging their child to speak English? So that’s step one is to make sure you communicate with the family to see what language they are speaking at home, and not to assume that they’re speaking a specific language just because of their cultural background.
Natalie Danner: Those are some great tips for teachers, for sure. Could you describe environmental print? Tell us about the role it might have in early childhood classrooms with multilingual learners, specifically.
Koryne Nnoli: Sure. So, with multilingual learners, environmental print is so important because we use it everywhere. So environmental print is really what a child sees in their environment, especially in a preschool setting, but also at home. So, if a family is referring to the color red at home, I’m going to use Spanish as an example. So, a family is referring to a red box, and they’re saying “rojo” as the color red in Spanish, then it’s important when you’re in class, that you’re also referring to this box or objects in your classroom with that same language. If there are multiple languages spoken in the classroom or represented in the classroom, you want to also represent that and then encourage your children or your students to also use that language. What do you use? What do you say when you’re at home? What color is this? How can you describe this? What is the size? So just encourage them to use their words when they’re speaking about different things within their environment. And this includes logos. So, McDonald’s or Burger King. If they see those environmental prints around their community, or on a cereal box, they have a familiar or favorite cereal that they love, encourage them to try to sound out that word or the name of the box, and then point out the initial letter in that box. So, yes, this is Cheerios. The first two letters C H in Cheerios is “ch” and just encourages them that with this environmental print that they’re also learning how to read and how to associate sounds with the letter symbols on the environmental print.
Natalie Danner: Great point and examples of what that looks like in a preschool classroom, I love that. When we talk about teachers, what are some ways that they can foster oral language development in the classroom for multilingual learners? You’ve given a couple of examples. Do you have any others?
Koryne Nnoli: Well, we always want to encourage open-ended questions. So open ended questions are going to allow the students to be more descriptive. So that’s going to encourage our students to speak more. So, if we’re using closed-ended questions, those are just yes/no questions. They’re going to result in those yes/no responses. So, we’re asking open-ended questions. What does this look like? How can you describe it? What’s the shape? What’s the size? How does it feel? Asking more of those descriptive questions, that’s going to encourage students to use language more. Also, when they have models, like language models in their classroom. So, there might be a student who’s just, we would like to say, a Chatty Kathy who loves to talk all the time, that person is going to be used as a language model for that child. And so, the more that we’re partnering them with those more talkative children that also encourages them to want to use their words, and regardless of if they’re using their home language or the primary language in the classroom, you still want to be able to encourage it. And also, if they do have a home language that’s different from the primary language. So, let’s say, for example, for my classroom, we spoke English because that was my primary language, and some of my students had different languages. I would always encourage them to use their home language in the class. It was okay. That they didn’t make an error, and we would still do that. For example, I used to play this math game with an inflatable die, and I would toss it back and forth, so we could identify the numbers on this die. Now let’s say the child, her home language was Spanish, and she ended up tossing to the number three. Well for her, the number in three is “tres.” And so, let’s say she got the ball or got the die, and she landed on three, and she said, “tres,” and I would say, “Yes, tres. Tres in English is three.” And so that will be encouraging her to use her home language, but it will also be teaching her what that number in Spanish was in English, and then it would also be teaching the other students. Now, they’re also learning two languages. They’re learning Spanish and English. And we’re just using that as a learning opportunity for all the students in the classroom.
Natalie Danner: I love that, how that benefits both the speakers of other languages as well as the speakers of English. And I love your example of peer models, too, because I think we can all imagine that one chatty Kathy that we might have had in our own classroom and pairing them up with a student who’s learning English can be such a great benefit, I think, for both of them. You mentioned this a little bit before about home language, and parents who might have priorities when they’re coming into the classroom about learning English and becoming fluent in English for their child? How can educators help both children and families to see their home language, and being bilingual or multilingual as a strength?
Koryne Nnoli: Oh, sure, it’s always important to be able to really not be fearful of using the home language, whether you’re at home or anywhere. And being in the United States, we have representation of so many different languages and cultures, but language is also a part of culture, and so we don’t want children to lose a part of their culture by losing their language. For example, my children, they are, their father is Nigerian, and I am American. And so with them, their father didn’t really want to encourage them to use their language in Nigeria. And so I was like, that’s so important, because that’s a part of their culture. That is a part of their culture, and if they don’t use it, it ends up being lost. And so then you have generations of families, of children whose language is ultimately lost because they want to use the language that is the primary language of whatever the country or culture is represented. So I always encourage parents to support their child in learning their home language. Don’t let them lose it, embrace it, and make sure that they are using it, and if you don’t want them to use it in school, please encourage them to use it at home, around family, because more than likely they’re going to be exposed to the English in school. They’re going to be exposed to the English in their community, but where they really are going to get it is at home. So I definitely want to make sure that we’re encouraging that and then collaborating with the families on how you can partner together to bring in artifacts, bring in cultural representations of the family, and how to work with children from those very diverse backgrounds.
Natalie Danner: Thank you so much for sharing your story, too, about your own children, and that experience of being bilingual and valuing home language, and even the ties to culture which are so important. Maintaining that home language can be really important, not only to culture and bringing that language into the classroom, but also to just having that family connectedness, especially with extended family thinking about them as well. So, let’s talk a little bit about students with disabilities. What about students with disabilities or delays who may be multilingual? Are there specific strategies that teachers can use to support these specific children and these and their families?
Koryne Nnoli: Yeah. So, with children who have disabilities and they are multilingual, some children end up having an IFSP which stands for an “individualized family service plan.” And those are typically for children beginning at birth on up to the age of three. So usually, IFSPs will have accommodations for children, and this may include some of the things that I already spoke about. It may include visual supports such as pictures, and already our little ones are learning through visuals. But using repetition, you might actually want to do things like playing games and singing songs, things that’s going to help them to remember and really retain the information that they’re learning. And then, again, any accommodations or modifications that might be outlined. You want to make sure you’re following those that are outlined in that child’s IFSP.
Natalie Danner: Definitely, and we may have preschoolers, too, that have disabilities, and for them we might look at their IEP just like you mentioned with the IFSP. For ages three, four, five year-olds that you may have in your preschool classroom, and very similar things to what you just said. There may be accommodations or modifications that you can make in your classroom. Also, I would mention, thinking about the other providers that are supporting the child as well. Could be a physical therapist or an occupational therapist that’s supporting them. And it can be a challenge to find specialists like PTs and OTs, and even speech and language therapists that may also be multilingual and supporting that child too. But it’s not to say they’re not out there. There definitely are people who speak lots of different languages, who are also specialized in those areas, but you know it can take some time to find them, but it can be very helpful to the child and to the family too.
Koryne Nnoli: Yes, and I also want to add to make sure. In my community where I was teaching, actually, we had so many cultures represented. And I know that’s not represented everywhere. So to try to communicate with family and friends about who is represented in your area in your community. Thankfully, I was fortunate that we did have occupational therapists. We had speech and language therapists, physical therapists. We even had music therapists who came into the classroom and worked with our children, and used things like songs from different cultures to work with our children so definitely partner with therapists as well, because they are a great support and resource.
Natalie Danner: One hundred percent agree with you on that one. So, as we move to the end of our episode, are there any online resources, maybe books or articles that you’d like to share with early childhood teachers who are working with multilingual learners?
Koryne Nnoli: No, but I do love Teaching Young Children. There are a lot of articles and resources that will help families and teachers working with children. So, I would definitely go to that. That’s a great resource to use.
Natalie Danner: Wonderful. We will definitely link your article in Teaching Young Children on our web page for educators to explore, as well as additional resources in Teaching Young Children. It’s a great resource. It’s a publication from NAEYC. If you’re an NAEYC member, you can choose to receive that. So many helpful tips have been shared about working with multilingual children. I wanted to thank you, Dr. Nnoli for being our guest on the Illinois Early Learning Podcast.
Koryne Nnoli: Thank you for having me.
Natalie Danner: Until next time, keep early learning at the forefront.
You have just heard a podcast by the Illinois Early Learning Project. For more information, please visit us at illinoisearlylearning.org where you can find evidence-based, reliable information on early care and education for parents, caregivers, and teachers of young children. Thanks for listening and for helping the children in your home, classroom, and community have a strong start in their early learning.
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