Karen Nemeth on Strategies To Engage Multilingual Learners In All Areas Of Learning

Karen Nemeth is an author, presenter, and advocate, focusing on early education for children who are multilingual learners. She has published dozens of books and articles on this topic and hosts a resource website at http://www.languagecastle.com Karen divides her time between residing in Pennsylvania and spending time with her family in London. She has worked with learners of all ages across the U.S. and other countries. She has a masters degree in Learning, Cognition, and Development and has held leadership roles in several major education organizations. Currently, Karen specializes in presenting professional learning experiences for early years teachers and care providers, as well as teaching outdoor nature classes for families and young children.

In this session, Karen shares the latest research and strategies to support multilingual learners across all areas of early years learning and development.

Karen highlights recent studies proving the vital role language plays in connecting social-emotional and cognitive growth. Key insights include:

• Frequent, quality conversations with children advance future academic and personal progress – yet often occur less with non-native speakers, so focusing on language bridges this gap.
• Traditional best practices help but fall short for multilingual pupils. Educators must continually update approaches by understanding the child’s perspective and scaffolding based on their comprehension level.
• Language learning cannot be separated from other learning. Begin with familiar contexts and materials to reveal children’s knowledge, interests and culture, then expand to unfamiliar concepts.
• Observe closely to uncover prior experiences to build on, as following their lead exposes strengths and language.

Karen stresses starting from the child’s vantage point to boost belonging, relationships and learning across developmental domains. She provides real-life examples illustrating language barriers and shares classroom strategies rooted in the latest evidence.

With engaging insights into current research and practice, this session offers an excellent opportunity to rethink your work with young multilingual learners.

Links:

Website: https://languagecastle.com/
Facebook: Karen Nemeth at Language Castle LLC https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063738065498
X formerly Twitter: @‌KarenNemethEdM
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-n-nemeth-855b4413/
ELLs/DLLs in Early Childhood https://www.linkedin.com/groups/3690982/

Find Karen’s blog post with all the links that she mentions in this Early Years TV session here: https://languagecastle.com/2023/11/06/early-years-tv-blog-post/