What strategies do you use to make that first connection with a family? It’s not always easy to find a meaningful way in.
For us, celebrating and embracing every child’s home life and family culture is powerful and effective. This is particularly important for multilingual children.
When Sara’s key person first met her, it was clear that her home language was a significant part of her identity. Sara is part of a large Somali family, and both her family and community speak Somali.
We recognised that valuing her home language would be central to building trust and a strong connection with her family. The EEF guidance report Working with parents to support children’s learning emphasises how important it is to work in partnership with parents to help their child’s learning.
How we encouraged Sara to develop proficiency in Somali and English
Marcus went on a home visit to see 2-year-old Sara and her family. One of the first things that struck him was Sara’s ease when interacting with him. Sara spoke to Marcus in Somali, urging him to learn some basic words. He tried, much to Sara’s pleasure and amusement!
Recognising how important it is to nurture a child’s home language, Marcus sourced some high-quality picture books in Somali and English for Sara to share with her family. He was intentionally showing that he valued their home language. This reassured Sara’s family and helped them feel proud of their language. They felt confident about speaking Somali and stopped worrying that they should be focusing on using just English at home.
Marcus encouraged Sara’s mum to contribute to her ‘special book’. She added photos of things they did at home and annotated them in Somali - her sister translated them into English.
Sara settled into nursery very well - she seemed contented and engaged pretty much from the beginning. Her family were happy and relieved that Sara was coping well with being away from home.
When Sara turned 3 years old, she moved rooms. Marcus worked on making the transition as smooth as possible. Sara’s special book and the English / Somali picture books were important aspects of this: they had been a consistent part of her time at nursery and would continue to support her. This sort of continuity is key when making a transition.
Initially, as Sara was familiarising herself with her new space and working on establishing relationships, she was very quiet. Rubina, her new key person, recognised that Sara understood English, so she responded to this:
Here is a vignette of their interactions at the snack table:
Rubina: Today we’ve got some crackers and soft cheese. Let’s get some plates ready…we have four friends here, so we need…
Sara looked at the table then held up 4 fingers, showing Rubina that she had understood her, and knew the quantity.
Rubina: Yes Sara! You looked at the table and saw that there were 4 friends. That means we need 4 plates.
Sara helped lay out the plates.
This case study shows how Rubina used the Respond and Expand strategies of the ShREC approach to have high quality interactions with Sara and further develop their relationship.
How celebrating the child’s home language impacts their learning
We can see how celebrating Sara’s home language helped us nurture a positive relationship with her family and impacted her settling in and learning.
We encourage proficiency in the child’s home language and English from the start – this is something we plan for and reflect on as a staff team. There is always more to learn about this.
Questions for reflection
How does your setting support the child to develop both their home language and English?
Reflect on a child who is learning English as an additional language. Can you see the impact this is having on their learning?