This document discusses the concept of translanguaging as a pedagogical approach to support bilingual students in diverse learning environments. It emphasizes the importance of leveraging students' linguistic repertoires and cultural backgrounds to enhance engagement, comprehension, and social justice in education. Practical strategies and classroom examples are provided to illustrate how translanguaging can be effectively implemented in various educational contexts.

1. Translanguaging in Diverse
Learning Contexts
Kate Seltzer
The CUNY Graduate Center
October 8, 2015

2. Today’s Plan:
 This presentation will:
 Extend existing understandings of translanguaging as
pedagogy
 Clarify the purposes and benefits of translanguaging
in the classroom
 Provide examples of translanguaging in action in
language learning classrooms
 Use a case study of a super diverse
school/classroom to illustrate the power &
possibilities of translanguaging
 Leave you with practical strategies and resources for
using translanguaging in your schools and
classrooms

3. Context for today’s
presentation
 A U.S. perspective on a theoretical
approach/pedagogy being taken up internationally
 Forthcoming book:
 Translanguaging Classrooms: Reimagining the Education of
Bilingual Students (García, Ibarra-Johnson, & Seltzer)
 Research project:
 CUNY-NYSIEB (New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals)
 Translanguaging: A CUNY-NYSIEB Guide for Educators (Celic &
Seltzer, 2012)

4. The Translanguaging Corriente
 Refers to the constant flow of
students’ dynamic bilingualism
that runs through classrooms and
schools
 Changes the static linguistic
landscape that is described and
defined from monolingual
perspectives
 Allows bilingual students to
integrate language features that
are usually kept separate

5. Translanguaging
Classrooms

6. Students’ Translanguaging
Performances
 Enable us to understand students’ ability to use
features of their entire linguistic repertoire, as well as
their ability to conform to different sociolinguistic
situations
 Do not separate “proficiency” into countable “languages”
 Move away from deficit views of students’ languaging
 Look at students’ bilingual performances holistically
 Recognize that bilinguals’ “proficiency” shifts depending on
the social situation/social context (not linear)

7. Teacher’s Translanguaging
Pedagogy
 Translanguaging Stance
 A philosophy that informs all instruction and assessment
of bilingual students
 Students’ language practices and cultural understandings
include those they bring from home/communities, as well as
those they take-up in schools
 Students’ families/communities are sources of knowledge
and must be involved in the education process.
 The classroom is a democratic space where teachers &
students co-create knowledge, challenge traditional
hierarchies, and work towards social justice

8. Teacher’s Translanguaging
Pedagogy
 Translanguaging Design
 Includes the design of the classroom space, units,
lessons, learning activities, assessments, etc.
 A science teacher organizes students into groups with
different levels of home/new language proficiency
 An English teacher organizes a unit around writers who utilize
multiple languages in their writing
 A bilingual teacher gives out a text in Spanish and English
and asks students to compare/contrast the lexicon, syntax,
morphology, and discourse structure
 A TESOL teacher plans assessments that differentiate
students’ general linguistic performances from their
language specific performances

9. Teacher’s Translanguaging
Pedagogy
 Translanguaging Shifts
 Moment-by-moment decisions that change with the flow
of the translanguaging corriente and allow for flexibility
in language practices, conversations, activities, and
plans
 In moments of difficulty/misunderstanding, encouraging
students to talk to one another about a new concept,
vocabulary word, etc., using their own language practices
 Looking up words and phrases using online translation tools
or having students do so on their own
 Using culturally meaningful metaphors and/or stories that
students relate to in order to make sense of new content

10. Why use translanguaging in
instruction?
 To enable students to engage with and comprehend
complex content and texts
 To develop students’ linguistic practices for
academic contexts
 To make space for students to draw on their
bilingualism and bilingual ways of knowing
 To support students’ social emotional development
and bilingual identities, and advance social justice

11. Classroom Examples –
 As a part of an unit on voting, students created
one election campaign advertisement for their
community in their home language, and a
different one in the second language. Students
presented both, in the second language, to the
class.

12. Classroom Examples –
 After a poetry study, students chose a poem
written in their home language and created a
PowerPoint presentation to teach their
classmates about that poem. Students read the
poem in their home language, but spoke about
and explained it to the class in the second
language.

13. Classroom Examples –
 Students were paired by shared home language
to complete a chemistry experiment. They were
able to discuss the experiment, read the
directions, and record their findings in that home
language. When it was time to discuss their
findings with the class and write up their formal
lab report, students did so in the second
language.

14. Translanguaging in
diverse contexts
An Elementary School in New York State

15. The School
 Located in northern New York State
 Educates approximately 800 students in grades K-5
 92% low income
 57% emergent bilingual
 Come from 70 different countries and speak 30 different languages
 Top languages: Karen, Somali, Burmese, and Nepali
 English as a second language programming; no bilingual
programming
 Has partnerships with community & refugee groups

16. Enacting a translanguaging stance through design:
A school-wide multilingual/multicultural ecology

17. The Classroom
 3rd grade ESL classroom
 “Pull-out” group of 10
students
 Students:
 Karen speakers from
Burma/Myanmar
 Karen – a minoritized
language in Burma
 Most are refugees/come
from refugee families
 Teacher: Nicole
 English-speaking; does not
speak Karen
 Born & raised in New York
 Why use translanguaging?
 Little-to-no education in Karen
in students’ rural communities
of Burma or in the refugee
camps of Thailand, and thus
no bilingual program option
 Leverages students’ language
practices and releases their
voices in order to engage
them in learning rigorous
content & meeting academic
standards
 Creates a safe, positive space
for students adjusting to a
new life

18. Nicole’s Translanguaging
Stance
 Became a teacher after volunteering with a
refugee organization in her city
 Attends Karen cultural and social events around
the city
 Advocated for an ESL pull-out classroom for small
number of Karen speakers
“Translanguaging is a way to showcase how special
[my students] are and what I feel as a person, not just
as a teacher. It has given me the support that I need
to do what I want to do with these kids. Before it was
like, ‘shh, hush it under the rug, use English
only”…[Translanguaging] is a way for me to
showcase who they are, make them feel special,
and give me a chance to learn about them.”

19. Nicole’s Translanguaging
Design
 Unit: Aesop’s Fables in English & Karen
①Nicole recorded members of the Karen-speaking community
& video recorded them reading the fables (6 total) in Karen
①Nicole planned literacy lessons around the use of the 2
versions of the fables
• Students read the fable in English with translations of key words in
Karen while practicing literacy skills (i.e.: compare/contrast,
sequencing, cause & effect)
• Students listened to the fable in Karen & followed along with the
Karen text, picking out the key words already introduced
• Students engaged in literacy activities that extended their
understandings of the fables in both English & Karen

21. Impact of translanguaging
in Nicole’s classroom
 “The most noticeable [differences] were motivation and
engagement…total, 100% attention.”
 “When I incorporate translanguaging in this way, I notice how
happy students are…they want to understand [the text]
because they’re proud [of their language”].
 Students’ role: from passive listeners to active teachers and
experts
 When students were held responsible for teaching Nicole new words
in their own language, they rose to the challenge!

22. Translanguaging Strategies for the
Second Language Classroom
 Students read in the SL and
discuss/analyze what they read in
the HL
 Assign reading partners that
share a HL for mutual assistance
 Students do independent reading
in multiple languages
 Encourage students to read &
research for research projects in
both languages
 Supplement SL readings with HL
language readings on the same
topic/theme
 Allow students to audio record
ideas first using both languages,
then transfer to writing
 Students pre-write in both
languages, then publish in the SL
 Assign writing partners that share
a HL for mutual assistance
 Students write first in the HL and
then translate that text into the
SL
READING WRITING

23. Translanguaging Strategies for the
Second Language Classroom
 Assign partners: beginner
speakers with intermediate
speakers, intermediate speakers
with any level, advanced
speakers with intermediate
 Assign newcomers a buddy to
show them around school,
answer questions, etc.
 Group students so they can use
both languages in small group
work, then present in the SL
 Allow students to discuss
lesson/ideas with partner in the
HL and SL
 Allow students to explain/share
ideas using the HL and the SL
(another student can translate if
you don’t speak language)
 Have students interview one
another using both the HL and
the SL and then share what they
learned in the SL
 Create a multilingual listening
center comprised of fiction and
non-fiction texts in the
classroom, narratives of
community members, and
books recorded by students (a
favorite book or their own
writing)
SPEAKING LISTENING

24. Translanguaging Strategies for the
Second Language Classroom
 Create multilingual word walls
 Create cognate charts
 Utilize multilingual graphic
organizers
 Provide students with bilingual
and/or bilingual picture
dictionaries
VOCABULARY COLLABORATIVE WORK
Students can:
 Discuss/reflect/negotiate in any
language and share out in the SL
 Preview in HL and
collaborate/create a product in
the SL
 Listen in the SL and discuss in any
language
 Research/prepare in a HL and
present in the SL

25. Ideas for moving forward with
translanguaging:
Read more about it:
Available for free online:
 Celic, C. & Seltzer, K. (2012). Translanguaging: A CUNY-NYSIEB guide
for educators.
 Hesson, S., Seltzer, K. & Woodley, H. (2015). Translanguaging in
Curriculum and Instruction: A CUNY-NYSIEB guide for educators.
Forthcoming publications:
 García, O., Ibarra-Johnson, S., & Seltzer, K. (forthcoming).
Translanguaging Classrooms: Reimagining the Education of Bilingual
Students.
 García, O., Seltzer, K. & Witt, D. (forthcoming). Disrupting linguistic
inequalities in US urban classrooms: The role of translanguaging. In
The Multilingual Edge of Education.

26. Ideas for moving forward with
translanguaging:
Think about small ways you could bring translanguaging
into your classrooms, such as:
 Tell students that their home languages are welcome in the
classroom and are valuable to their learning a second
language
 Tell students that they can talk to one another in the home
language when doing work in the second language
 Create a multilingual welcome sign, bulletin board, or other
visual in students’ home languages
 Learn a few greetings or words of encouragement in
students’ home languages

27. Questions & Answers

28. +
Kate Seltzer
kseltzer@gc.cuny.edu
Thank
you!