ImmigrantChildren.ca Archive

Category: Language and Literacy

Issues related to supporting and promoting early literacy, family literacy and retention of first language.

  • Importance of retaining "home language" of children

    From the Toronto District School Board, “Research shows that children who have a strong foundation in their home language acheive greater success at school.  Click to watch a film that will suggest different activities that parents, guardians, and caregivers can enjoy together wtih children to encourage development of the home language and ultimately greater success at school”.
    Visit mylanguage.ca for many useful resources and information on this important issue.

  • Language and reading comprehension of immigrant children

    Select slide presentations from the May ’09 Language and Reading Comprehension for Immigrant Children (LARCIC) conference are now available on the LARCIC website. All presentations open as PDFs.

  • Integration v. multiculturalism

    Federal Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, The Honourable Jason Kenney Friday, July 10/09 announced $9.5 Million to Calgary immigrant serving organizations delivering language training. Citing once again the well-known quote by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Kenney reiterated that “newcomers have a right to be different but a duty to integrate”. Adding:

    “Our new focus is on integration. We don’t want to create a bunch of silo communities where kids grow up in a community that more resembles their parents’ country of origin than Canada”. (Source: The Canadian Press).

    Calgary immigrant serving organizations were happy to receive the funds, however, no details were made available on whether or how much of this funding is allocated to children’s settlement and language training.

  • Financial literacy program for newcomer women

    The St. Joseph Immigrant Women’s Centre in Hamilton, Ontario today received over $130,000 to support a financial literacy program for immigrant women. The Centre works with refugee and immigrant women and “provides services including labour market training and support, language and driving instruction, educational funding, and health services for women and their families”.
    Minister of State, Status of Women, Helena Guergis made the announcement today. From the news release:
    “New Canadians play a vital role in contributing to Canada’s economy. Especially during these tough economic times, it is more important than ever that new Canadians have the opportunity and skills to contribute fully,” said Minister Guergis. “By supporting the St. Joseph’s Immigrant Women’s Centre in carrying out this important project, our Government is working to ensure that immigrant and refugee women have the tools they need to overcome poverty”.
    immigrantchildren.ca hopes that child care is supported as one of the tools to lift newcomer families out of poverty – and provide children with quality early learning opportunities.

  • Meet Rebecca: A Russian-Jewish immigrant doll

    The American Girl series of historical fiction for young adults has been a big success in the US. A similar series runs in Canada, and includes a story about the home children: Orphan at My Door: The Home Child Diary of Victoria Cope, written by Jean Little. The Canadian series is called Our Canadian Girl.
    The American Girl series also has accompanying dolls. Launching this weekend, to great anticipation, will be Rebecca, the Russian-Jewish immigrant doll to go along with Jacqueline Dembar Greene’s Meet Rebecca.
    According to the May 23rd edition of the Sunday New York Times, a great deal of research went into what a Russian-Jewish immigrant doll should look like, with early comments favourable (Previous American Girl dolls stirred up controversies).

  • More than words: Supporting 2nd language acquisition in young immigrant children

    Interesting story out of Penn State University where researchers worked with preschool programs to help them identify strategies to support 2nd language learning in very young immigrant children.
    The children were given cameras and asked to take photos of their world outside of their classrooms. Then, the children talked about the pictures they had taken with their teachers. Researchers cite improved teacher and child interactions and stronger language and vocabulary development in the children. 
    From the news story:

    “After the two years and final transcript comparisons were completed, the study unexpectedly found that learning English was not an obstacle to the oral expression of immigrant preschool children when compared to their native-born classmates. In fact, once invited into conversation through photo elicitation, the stories of reportedly “quiet” immigrant children proved as long as the others. And there was no statistical difference in conversational skills when American-born and immigrant children were compared and, in fact, the immigrant language complexity became superior to the native-born children.
    The findings of the study also provided a caution for the teachers in the preschool. ‘The teachers have to listen to the kids,…We found the teachers had preconceived notions or myths about the children. The photo exercises changed that and they learned a great deal about the child’s world. The project turned out to be a powerful invitation for all the children to converse and they provided a place for the immigrant voice to be heard’.

  • Using international literature to build intercultural understanding: The IBBY Conference

    “Children’s Books: Where Worlds Meet” is the theme for the 8th International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) conference, to be held in St. Charles, Illinois Oct 2-4/09.

    From the conference brochure: “Stimulating and thought-provoking book discussions and small group sessions will provide opportunities to network with concerned professionals and to think about issues related to the use of international literature to build intercultural understanding”.

    Featured at the conference will be An Imaginary Library: Children’s Books That Don’t Exist (Yet). Seventy-two artists from over 30 countries create book covers for books not (yet) in existence. The exhibit invites delegates to consider what the book content might be from the cover. Fun!
    Among the speakers is Canada’s Patsy Aldana, president of IBBY, founder of Groundwood Books and on the founding board of The Canadian Children’s Book Centre.

  • Mirrors, windows & doors: Multicultural children's literature

    Recently released text: Critical Multicultural Analysis of Children’s Literature: Mirrors, Windows, and Doors.
    From the foreward:

    “Children’s literature is a contested terrain, as is multicultural education. Taken together, they pose a formidable challenge to both classroom teachers and academics. Rather than deny the inherent conflicts in the field, in (the text), Maria Jose Botelho and Masha Kabakow Rudman confront, deconstruct, and reconstruct these terrains by proposing a reframing of the field. Surely all of us – children, teachers, and academics – can benefit from this more expansive understanding of what it means to read books”.
    Sonia Nieto.

    Canadian connection: co-author Maria Jose Botelho was with the University of Toronto. Lots of Canadian references in the text, as well as Canadian context. How refreshing!
    Let’s discuss.

  • Mothering and migration: (Trans)nationalism, globalization & displacement

    Call for papers for a conference from the Association for Research on Mothering (ARM), as posted on the mnchp-l listserv: Mothering and Migration: (Trans)nationalisms, Globalization, and Displacment. The conference will be held February 18-20, 2010 at the University of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico.
    Submissions are welcome from scholars, students, activists, government agencies and workers, artists, mothers, and others who work or research in the area. Cross-cultural, historical and comparative work is encouraged. Topics can include (but not limited to):
    Representations/images of mothers and migration and (trans)national issues; globalization of motherhood; empowering migrant mothers; reproduction and movement of mother workers; migrant and (trans)national mothers and capitalism; migrant and (trans)national mothers and activism; public policy issues.
    For more information, contact the ARM at arm@yorku.ca or 416.736.2100 ext 60366. Or visit the ARM website. Abstract and bio deadline is Sept 1/09.

  • "They don't like us"

    Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, Vol. 10, No. 1 includes the article “They Don’t Like Us”: Reflections of Turkish Children in a German Preschool, by Fikriye Kurban and Joseph Tobin, Arizona State University. From the abstract:

    In this article, the authors present multiple interpretations of a transcript of a discussion with a group of Turkish-German girls in a kindergarten in Berlin, Germany. These five-year-old girls make statements suggesting they experience alienation from their non-Turkish classmates and teachers, and the wider German society. The authors argue that the meanings of these statements should not be taken at face value. Instead, they employ interpretive strategies borrowed mostly from Mikhail Bakhtin and interpretive frameworks taken from Judith Butler, and post-colonial theory and Critical Race Theory to suggest that the girls’ utterances can be usefully seen as having a performative dimension and as expressing tensions around immigration that can be found in the larger society.