Responsive Teaching and Learning Environments for Dual Language Learners

Responsive Teaching and Learning Environments for Dual Language Learners

Deborah Mazzeo: Hello and welcome to this webinar on responsive teaching and learning environments for dual language learners. My name is Deborah Mazzeo, and I'm the cultural and linguistic practices coordinator at the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching and Learning, or DTL for short. We know that many programs continue to remain closed at this time due to the pandemic. Some of the information will be relevant for when programs remain open for the summer or later in the fall, and where appropriate, we'll also be presenting information that you may share with families while still social distancing. I'm accompanied today by my two colleagues, and I'll ask them to say hello and share their roles.

Karen, you want to start?

Karen Nemeth: Hello, I'm Karen Nemeth, and I'm the senior training and technical assistant specialist for dual language learners at the National Center for Early Childhood Development for Teaching and Learning.

Deb: And Jan?

Jan Greenberg: All right. My name is Jan Greenberg, and I'm a senior subject matter expert child development also at the DTL Center with Deb and Karen, and it's good to be here.

Deb: Thank you, ladies. So, our agenda is first to introduce planned language approach resources that guide effective practices for teaching children who are DLLs that can be used at home and when programs start back up. We're going to take a closer look at language and culture by reviewing recent research findings. We'll be sharing highlights of recent research from two major OPRE, which stands for the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, studies including the American Indian and Alaskan Native Faces study and the Migrant and Seasonal Head Start study, and then third, we'll be identifying ways to use valuable resources from a planned language approach and the Dual Language Learners Program Assessment in your work. We say the DLLPA for short, and the DLLPA will be relevant as programs start back up for the summer or regular program year.

So, our hope is that by the end of this webinar, you'll be able to describe effective teaching strategies and environments to support children who are learning in two or more languages in all birth-to-five settings, including homes, that you'll be able to identify related Planned Language Approach resources and also understand items in section five of the Dual Language Learners Program Assessment, which it titled "Teaching and the Learning Environment," so this presentation will cover all settings, but we're starting off with home-based programs due to the current situation for many. In the next slide, we'll plan to cover group care settings, but for home-based programs, the Head Start Program Performance Standards emphasize the following: age- and developmentally-appropriate, structured, child-focused learning experiences, strategies, and activities that promote parents' ability to support their child's cognitive, social, emotional, language, literacy and physical development and, third, strategies and activities that promote the home as a learning environment that is safe, nurturing, responsive and language-rich, and communication-rich. If you're checking in with families over the phone or through other means during this time, think about how you're addressing these important points. How can we support families and at the same time not burden them during this time?

So, these are some questions for you to consider and reflect on. Now here are some important elements to consider in group care settings. Again, according to the Head Start Program Performance Standards, teaching and the learning environment includes effective teaching practices, and with that, we're talking about things like nurturing and responsive interactions filled with rich, engaging language, environments that foster trust and emotional security, developmentally appropriate practices that promote critical thinking and activities that support for all of the developmental domains in the ELOF, or the Early Learning Outcomes Framework.

We also look for well-organized learning environments that include developmentally appropriate schedules, lesson plans, indoor and outdoor learning experiences, with opportunities for choice and play and exploration and so much more. We look for materials and space for learning, and that includes age-appropriate equipment, materials, supplies, and space for indoor and outdoor learning environments. That must also be accessible to children with disabilities, and then lastly, we look to promote learning through approaches to rest by offering quiet learning activities for children who don't want to nap, for example, meal as a time for conversations, routines like handwashing and diapering, and transitions and also physical activity to support health.

Again, right now, many of you may not be in the typical learning environment, and you're supporting effective practices at home, so consider what materials and practices you're encouraging with the families that you're supporting at this time. I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Karen, now to talk about this definition.

Karen: Well, thank you, Deb. This is an important consideration because the Planned Language approach really provides supports for all children, and all children in the birth-through-5 age range need support of their culture and their language, but we need to provide additional information about supporting children who are learning in two or more languages, and in Head Start and child care, we use the term, "dual language learner," to be defined as you see on your screen. A dual language learner means a child who is acquiring two or more languages at the same time or a child who is learning a second language while continuing to develop their first language, and the Head Start Program Performance Standards mention what should be happening to teach children who are dual language learners in both group care and home-base settings, so to make sure we're all on the same page, we always like to begin by sharing that definition and clarifying what we would be looking for in providing those supports.

So, it's important to remember all children who are growing up with two or more languages are considered dual language learners. Even if a child seems to be doing well in English, they still have prior learning stored in their brain that is based on the vocabulary, the input, the experiences they have at home in their home language, so even though they may be able to use English, they still know things in their home language, and we have to tap on that prior language in order to help them grow and learn, so we pull that together as a reminder as we go through the resources and strategies that we're going to share, so for example, here's a collection of effective teaching practice specifically suggested for children who are dual language learners. For example, these actually come directly from the Head Start Program Performance Standards, helping children comprehend and communicate in home language and in English.

Children need support of their home language to help them understand content, to help them express themselves and to help them connect new learning to their prior knowledge, so when we talk about supporting home language, it's supporting for a purpose. It's for the purposes that you see here on your screen, not just general support, but very specific and intentional support, and programs have to recognize the importance bilingualism and biliteracy, right?

Learning literacy in two languages are assets for children. They are assets in the here and now and strengths that can support their child's success throughout their life. Infants and toddlers who are dual language learners also benefit from high-quality support in their home language while education staff also provide experiences exposed both the parents and the children to English as well, and when the infants are cared for by adults who are not fluent in their home language, high-quality English support is critical, and some kinds of experiences that connect with the home language can still be provided like stories or songs or inviting volunteers to read to the children in their home languages. For preschool-aged dual language learners, they benefit from a focus on teaching and learning in their home language and opportunities to learn English as well. In both cases, specific, intentional plan to provide those learnings experiences in the home language and separately experiences in English. And in group care settings, if staff don't speak the home language of all the children in the learning environment, program must include steps to support the development of the home language such as having culturally and linguistically appropriate materials available and other evidence- based strategies.

So, programs must work to identify those volunteers who can speak the children's home languages, who can be trained to work in the classroom to support children's continued development of the home language, to interact with them, to play with them, to really serve as powerful language models for them. And we are going to be talking about some details about how you can look for these strategies, to recognize what you're already accomplishing and to identify ways to help you identify new strategies as well, and to do that, we recommend that you take a look at this document, which is called Dual Language Learners Program Assessment, which we call the DLLPA for short, and this is a document that provides useful support for the way you integrate culturally and linguistically responsive practices in a systems-wide approach, and there are 10 sections that we talk about, and the programs can use the DLLPA to identify their areas of strength and the areas they want to improve for their own purposes.

And so, we have a quick survey question, a poll question for you. Here is our poll, and it's asking you, have you used the DLLPA in your own work? We're interested just to see so that you all can see in the audience, and the choices are, A, "I have not heard of the DLLPA," or, B, "I have heard of it, but I haven't used it," or, C, "I have used the Dual Language Learners Program Assessment, or DLLPA," so I hope you are entering your answers into the survey, and I'll give you a few more seconds to answer. OK. Now let's take a look. That ... 50% of you said, "I have not heard of this resource," so already, a few minutes into our webinar today, you are learning about a tool that you can use to have a tremendous impact on your work, but about a third of you have heard of it and have not used it, so think about that. Only 14% of you have actually used the DLLPA, lots more people can be prepared to use this tool to help them improve the practices and be more informed and use the links that the document provides and that Deb is about to tell you about.

Deb: Thank you so much, Karen, and what great information, absolutely. We're so glad that you all are on here then today, so on the slide, you see the front cover of the DLLPA tool, and next to it you see the PLA, the Planned Language Approach Framework, which is an example of a coordinated approach to support very intentional planning and implementation, and this makes it possible for individual staff and for whole programs to support equitable access to learned for all children, but we … Most of us know that the Head Start Program Performance Standards require programs to identify coordinated approaches to ensure the full and effective participation of children who are DLLs and their families, and so the use of both PLA and the DLLPA meet the requirement.

So, to give you a little bit of background, within a planned language approach, there are these five categories, though five sections of the pie. Three of the categories provide resources for teaching all children, and two sections provide additional information about effective practices for supporting learning and language development of children who are DLLs. So, just a quick little run-through of the five sections here. We have a research base in children's language development in one or more languages, and it builds on the research on brain development and is applicable to all children. There's home-language support, which serves as the foundation for English-language skills. There are strategies that support DLLs so that they can thrive in their home language and in English. There's the policies, practices and systems that sustain language and literacy development throughout all aspects of the program. And this is the section that's kind of uplifted here in the image because that is where the DLLPA is linked in the section of the PLA pie. And then finally, there's that section, the big five for all, which addresses those key, five key elements of early language and literacy development that children need to really be successful in school. Those are the skills that are supported by research and connected to the language and literacy domain of the ELOF, the Early Learning Outcomes Framework.

Almost all of the resources that we're going to be discussing are found in this PLA pie. So, here is a screenshot of section five of the DLLPA for those of you aren't familiar with the tool. And so, section five, of course, then focuses on teaching and the learning environment. You can download the full PDF of this tool in the resources widget, so just know it's located there.

Essentially, for those who are not familiar, it is a self-assessment tool that is rated on a five- point scale, and here is an example of the culturally and linguistically responsive practices from this section, section No. 5 on the teaching and learning environment. And so, I know the items are very small. I'll just kind of share a few of them with you. Again, you'll have the full PDF to be able to refer to, but it lists items such as ensuring that learning experiences such as music, math and science reflect the cultures and languages of the children that you serve, incorporating key words and phrases in the home languages of children in the learning experiences that are being offered and in everyday routines, promoting children's positive self-concept by using the correct pronunciation of their name, children's name, using materials, visuals and other items that reflect their families' cultures that teachers and home visitors include as part of planned teaching strategies, and the list just goes on, so we encourage you to really utilize this as you're thinking about starting back up in your programs, so then below those rated items, there are questions, and you'll find ... Or below the questions, I'm sorry, you'll find a list of related resources, and many are a part of this planned language approach that we're going to be showing and discussing momentarily. It's also important to note that we have included many in the resources widget for you to be able to easily download, so the resources within the DLLPA can be useful for both during self-assessment and in a program's ongoing work to support children who are DLLs and their families. These will help meet the Head Start Program Performance Standards, which are also found in each section of the DLLPA for convenience for you to be able to reference.

So, one of the sections as we had mentioned before is the home language support, which is important for young children who are dual language learners. Research shows they are more successful in school and later in life when they develop strong language and literacy skills in both their home language and in English. It also shows that becoming bilingual or even multilingual has many benefits, including cognitive, social-emotional, approaches to learning, and global benefits. One of the resources in an upcoming slide comes from this section of the pie, and just so you all know, when you get onto the ECLKC, the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center webpage, the pie is interactive, so when you click on each slice, it takes you straight to the several resources that are related to that topic area. There's a whole section of the pie that contains resources with strategies that support DLLs. Many of these will be helpful when adults don't speak children's languages, and so we encourage you to visit the webpage, and now we'll discuss some of the resources here today in these sections. So, these are some examples of the tip sheets that you'll find in the section on strategies that support DLLs. You can use them to find specific strategies to support the full and effective participation of children who are DLLs, so we have creating environments that include children's home languages and cultures, inviting and supporting cultural guides and home language models and then including children's home languages and cultures.

Again, you can download these from the resources widget. If you're open during the summer, you may want to use these and maximize the time you with the children to get them ready for kindergarten. By including children's home languages and cultures, you're helping both the families and children feel more comfortable and included. You're showing that you value and respect them, and you're helping them make important connections by developing their understandings. These resources on this slide are found in the home language support section of the pie. Notice that they are available in several languages because they are for the families. Families are true educational partners in your work with young children.

When school is in session or when families and children are home, they are critical to supporting home language and literacy activities, but it is important to remember that families have different needs for receiving and using this kind of information. Some families will implement the suggested strategies when you send them the resource by mail. Others might benefit from a phone call, either from a teacher or from a bilingual volunteer. Many families take action when they receive tips in small doses via text message, such as TalkingPoints, Remind or ClassDojo. Remember that our goal is not to just send out information. Our goal is to help families use new strategies at home. Several approaches may be needed, and I assure you, the results will be worthwhile. Learning at home is an important part of the systems and services we use to support language and literacy for all children. Karen, you want to talk about this next resource?

Karen: Yes, thank you, and this actually connects with what you were just saying, Deborah, because we have a lot of resources that can be used in a variety of settings, but we wanted to make sure we designed this resource specifically for the actions and the supports that home visitors needs to provide for families, and so this resource, which is called "Considerations and Strategies for Home Visitors," it is designed to give you direct information about what you might do with families or recommend for families, and it includes – it is included as a handout in your widget so that you can print out the whole thing, and you'll see examples of strategies like supporting families as they learn to view their home language as a gift that they passed down to their child, encourage families to honor the strength of their home language and to use it to support their relationships with their child as well as their learning interactions that they might have at home, so you could make it clear to families that their child benefits most from the words, stories, songs and conversations they have in their home language that the family is most comfortable speaking because that's the language where they can be the most expressive and where they have the most knowledge and the most emotion as well, so using the home language at home is a valuable thing, and this resource gives you examples of how you can help families make that happen. It also gives you strategies to share with families about how they can begin the transition to English as well while continuing to support their home language and how to work with families to understand what English and home language supports the child can receive when they do return to school and what they can expect and how the family can continue to be involved, so we really encourage for those of you who are already working as a home visitor to use this resource, but it's also a great resource for those of you who had been classroom teachers and now are learning new ways to support the same kind of learning at home, so that's one example of one of the newer resources that we just posted in the past year.

Another resource that's newly revised is this one that's about organizing learning experiences, and this is where we really got a chance to provide details about the kinds of things that should be happening in a child's environment to support their learning. So, this resource has a lot of details and you can see right on the slide, it's a lot of words and some pictures, but the main message in there is about providing hands-on materials and providing extra time for the children to explore those materials over and over again, to find different ways to talk about them, to build their vocabulary, to practice their vocabulary, right, so that when we bring something out for children to do, whether it's in a classroom or group setting or whether it's at home. We have to keep remembering, children need to continue to engage, and you know one example of that. You're all familiar with this, I know. It's very ... Once you read a story to a child, they're bound to ask for it again and again. It turns out that research supports that as an important component of learning, and so the same is true for the materials they use, the games they play, et cetera, and I just heard recently of an example in the field of a program that had been planning hands-on activities when the shutdown happened, and they wanted to support the learning at home, so they created packets of the supply for the hands-on activity and had the school bus drivers deliver them to the front doors of the different families, and then when they were on a digital platform learning together, each child had the materials for the hands-on activity at their home, So, that's just one example, and you'll see lots of examples in this resource.

Now, another resource that we want to highlight for you is this one, which is called selecting and using culturally appropriate children's books, and this is an important resource because it really provides guidance about how to choose books that would be most effective for children who are dual language learners and their families, and then it gives information about how to use those books in practical ways, so you'll see that there are some examples for group settings like inviting family members to come into the program and inviting them to read to children in small groups and talk about the books in the language they feel most comfortable., but you can also offer training to those family members or provide a video showing interesting ways to read books to support them to have those high-quality interactions themselves. Books for infants for and toddlers might be more durable. They might have less words. They might be really interactive. Books for older children might be longer and have more words, more different kinds of stories, et cetera, but this resource will help you look at each kind of book and make decisions about what really is the most culturally responsive and culturally respectful. So, for example, a strategy might be: Learn a few key words in the book to highlight when you're talking about the content. Use questions. Use props. Use images, and make sure that those things are meaningful to the children. Well most children's books have pictures, but we need to take a look at those pictures and make sure that they really are understandable to the children and that they are also free from stereotypes, so those are the kinds of helps that you'll get in this resource, and we also want to make sure that you think about this as a resource that can support families in their choices of books and their use of books as well, so there are lots of great ways to help families share books with their children when they have to stay home. Public libraries have websites with lots of resources, so if you can't get out to get books, you can find free stories to read online on public library websites and other resources that have online resources in multiple languages. Look for videos of authors or celebrities or teachers who are reading stories aloud online so that you can view those stories and then talk about them with the children. There are storybook apps available in both Android and Apple platforms that allow you to create stories or read stories online or play stories that the children can listen to in

English and in other languages. And these strategies in this resource can help you evaluate digital stories as well. So, we encourage you to take a look at that resource as something that you can use for group settings, for home visitors, and for people who are used to doing group setting and now want to support the families in their learning activities at home.

Another resource that works across all those patterns is the Ready DLL app. This is a free app that's available on both platforms as well and it has information about supporting children's home languages, learning survival words, and it actually has the recordings of the words so you can learn to say important words in different languages, so you can say them with the children and you can also encourage families to download this app, and they can learn the words that are familiar in their home language, and then also learn to say them in English. The app has videos that you can watch that show high quality learning experiences. It has activity suggestions, links, direct links to resources, so they might be seeing a question or a strategy on the app and they can go right to a resource to learn more about it. So, invite the families and other speakers of the home languages. So, for example, volunteers or other adults that assist in your program can use this app to get ideas about how they can support home language and English in interesting, creative, and high-quality ways. So, that's the Ready DLL app. And the next thing we're going to talk about is a resource that Jan is going to tell you about.

Jan: Well, thanks, Karen, and yes. It's always good to have a variety of resources that you can use to select and use culturally and linguistically appropriate materials and resources for the children and families in your program, and that's what this recently newly revised resource can help you do. This is the culturally and linguistically responsive, or CLR, express checkout worksheet. It's a checklist that you can use that has four easy steps and the "E" in easy is represented in all four of the steps. So, you might ... Your first step would be to figure out who the intended audience is, and what the resource would help them know and do. You would have people reviewing the resource who represent diverse perspectives, and have information about research or demographic changes and trends, and then you would use the items in the checklist to evaluate the resource, and then finally you would embrace this resource if it supports the core values in your program and the children and families that it serves. So, who might use this worksheet and how might they use it? Well, administrators and managers might use it when they're reviewing professional development resources or even creating professional development resources. They could use it as their creating things like newsletters, fliers, and parent handbooks, and teachers and family child care providers could also use it as one way for examining children's books for cultural and linguistic appropriateness, and home visitors might use this with parents as their examining children's books together for the same reason, so yet another tool in your toolbox.

OK. So, in this section on, "Taking a Closer Look at Language and Culture," we want to highlight three resources that you might want to know about and perhaps be able to use. The first one we will talk about is the Dual Language Learners info graphic, and then we'll talk about two research studies from the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation. One is the American Indian and Alaskan Native Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey from 2015, and the second one is the Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Survey from 2017. And both of these surveys provide national snapshots on what staff are actually doing in the classrooms related to supporting children's language development and incorporating culture in the classroom. So, again, we're going to start with the Dual Language Learners in Head Start info graphic and you can find the full infographic, because what we're showing you here is just the top portion of it, on the ECLKC and it's also available in the green resource widget. And it provides useful data about the languages that children are speaking in our Head Start and Early Head Start programs, and this is useful information that you can use in your program, and that you might share with colleagues and families and your policy council, your board members, and other interested people in your community.

One point we actually want to make about the information in this info graphic is that yes, many of the children in our programs are dual language learners, and of the children who speak the language other than English, 80% of them speak Spanish. However, on the other hand, not all the children who are dual language learners speak Spanish. Twenty percent of them speak a language that is not Spanish. So, it's good to think about all of the languages that children and families speak in your program and think about how are you supporting those languages. So, you might even want to consider creating your own infographics using the language, using the data you collect on the languages that children and families speak in your program. One other point we want to make is that in terms of culture, all families have culture, right? Whether they speak English or another language, so this is an important thing to remember as we think about how we represent and honor all children's cultures in all of our settings. So, I'm going to turn this back over to Deb, to talk about the first of the OPRE surveys.

Deb: All right. Thank you so much, Jan. Though next I would like to share some of the new AIAN American Indian and Alaska Native FACES 2015 study results. So, just to give a little bit of background, Head Start FACES, which stands for the Families and Child Experiences Survey dates back over 20 years and actually, to be exact it's 1997, and always included a nationally representative sample of Head Start programs but it did not include Region XI, whose programs are designed to serve predominantly AIAN children and families, until now. So, that's what makes this so very exciting. There are many reports that have resulted from this study but this one is specific to home and community, native language, and cultural experiences. And while the study started back 2015, this report was recently just released. Again, you'll be able to find this in the resources widget, so you'll be able to see the full report.

The report actually took two years to develop, and the process for developing it involved heavy input from community partners, researchers, federal partners and a steering committee.

Regarding the application of the data, it's not about the individual experiences of Region XI Head Start programs. It included a nationally representative sample, and therefore, it describes everyone and no one at the same time, if that makes any sense.

While Region XI Head Start programs are operated by federally recognized tribes, most serve some non-AIAN children, and in the AIAN FACES 2015, 80% of the children were reported by their parents as AIAN-only or in combination with another race or ethnicity. So, this brief only reports on information about those children, and it used parent survey data. The whole report must be framed in the native language loss communities have experienced. While English is the primary language of 95% of the children in tribal Head Start programs, over 90% of parents feel it's important for their children to learn the tribal language. Some communities has several tribal language speakers, however, others are really at risk of losing their last language speakers. There is a huge effort to revitalize indigenous languages. Some of you may be aware that last year, 2019, was considered the year of indigenous languages by the United Nations to bring awareness to this issue. Several language summits have been happening across the U.S., in states like Washington, Montana, and Minnesota, to support Head Start programs in this effort.

Though I encourage you to look at the entire report, but for the sake of time we're going to just look at question No. 5 in particular. And I want to state that language and culture are inextricably linked. This finding looks specifically at cultural activities. And question No. 5 from the report reads that, "What percent of AIAN children participated in community cultural activities in the past month?" So, what the results show are that the majority, 81% of AIAN children in Region XI Head Start, participated in at least one AIAN cultural activity in the community in the last month, according to their parents reports. The most common past month AIAN community cultural activity for children was participating in traditional ways, which include activities like carving, harvesting, collecting, hunting, or fishing, listening to elders tell stories, and dancing, singing, or drumming at a powwow or other cultural community activities. Some of the others included participating in traditional ceremonies, working on traditional arts and crafts, and playing AIAN games.

If you work in an AIAN program, you can use the same kinds of questions to look at what's happening in your programs after they resume, or what cultural activities families are engaged in now. I know the Urban Indian Health Institute put out great messaging around keeping physically distant but remaining close socially and culturally, and in their messaging stated things like dancing or drumming via Skype. So, some of those are ideas for you to think about when inquiring with the families that you work with. All right. Jan, I'm going to turn it back over to you.

Jan: OK. Thanks, Deb. So, that same FACES study that was conducted 20 years ago that Deb just mentioned, also didn't include Region XII, Migrant Seasonal Head Start. And so, a research study was done in 2017 on Migrant Seasonal Head Start programs, and what you see on the screen is one of the briefs that was recently released. So, this brief focuses on selected data from one of the classroom observation tools used in the study, the Migrant and Seasonal Cultural Items and Language Use Checklist, or CILU, which was an adaptive measure from the study that Deb just talked about.

So, in this observation, all the classroom observers were bilingual. They conducted observations for 2 to 2.5 hours, depending on the age of the children in the classroom, and this was also key to interpreting the data that they gathered. So, this brief looks at four questions. How many books in different languages were used? How many songs were sung in different languages?

What languages the lead teachers used in the classroom, and what cultural items were both present and used?

So, these findings are presented for three different age groups, although there were some mixed age group classrooms in the observations, and a lot more data was collected than is represented in the is brief. So, for example, the full study contains data about assistant teacher practices, and this one just focuses on the lead teacher. So, we know that many programs have been closed, and you all have been pretty much working virtually with children and families and we also know that some programs are planning to reopen in the next month or so.

So, while you're still at home, this would actually be a great opportunity to reflect on the role of your own cultural background and begin to list some items that represent your cultural interests and traditions that you might incorporate into authentic learning experiences for the young children you work with. You might also use this time to have conversations with families and staff about their cultural interests in traditions, and to brainstorm kinds of materials or activities that you could highlight in the child's at-home learning experiences and once children come back into your programs.

OK, so some interesting selected findings from this study that are in this brief. So, in Book Reading, staff were observed to read to children in most of the classrooms, and they primarily read books written in Spanish and English, and you can see that in 81% on infant and young toddler classrooms, an average of 2.9 books were read. Eighty-three percent of preschool classrooms, 2.2 books were read. For singing, the average number of songs sung during the observation period ranged from five songs in preschool classrooms to nine songs in infant and young toddler classrooms. And again, Spanish and English were frequently used for singing during these observations. In terms of language use, yes, we teachers often use some combination of English and Spanish in their classrooms. That happened in 27% of infants and young toddler classrooms, 48% of older toddler classrooms and 76% of preschool classrooms, and it was much less common for we teachers to use English only. And finally, in terms of cultural items, and if you download and read the report, you'll see a description of what was considered to be a cultural item, but in this survey a variety of cultural items were present and used in classrooms and multilingual books were the most likely items to be both present and used. Specifically, these books were present in all of the classrooms, and used in about 3/4 of the classrooms, and the least likely items to be, cultural items to be used in the infant and young toddler classrooms were home language labels, and in preschool classrooms the least likely used cultural items for cultural displays.

Again, if you're working in a Migrant Seasonal Head Start program, you might look at the findings in this brief, which again, these are just national averages, and think about what the classroom practices look like in your programs compared to what the national averages are. In other words, what does book reading look like? What does singing look like? What's the language use look like? And what cultural items are both present and used in your classrooms? So, as we're thinking about these studies which included looking at cultural items in the classrooms, and what items were present and whether they were referred to or used in some way, think about your program and settings. How are you using cultural items in your program? Are you drawing children's attention to them? Are you talking about them? Are you asking children about them? Do you invite children to use them? Or, how might you encourage families to use their own cultural items at home, and we invite you to take a moment and share some of your ideas in the Q&A box. I will tell you that when Deb, Karen, and I were thinking about this, we came up with things like using musical instruments and making music, and making music using cooking tools and eating utensils, having articles of clothing that could be used for different purposes at different times, different kinds of art, fabrics, or tapestries, and different kinds of baskets and how they might be used in your settings. So, those were just some of your ideas and I can see that some of you are telling us the same kinds of things that we came up with. And so, I'm now going to turn this back over to Deb, and she's going to share just a few more additional resources in the time we have left. Deb?

Deb: Yeah, thanks so much, Jan. So, yes, as we wind down here with our final few minutes, I just want to make sure to mention these series of briefs. These two, specifically, are related to our webinar topic today. They were developed to support home visitors, but teachers and family child care providers will also find them valuable to learn more about the recent research on important child development topics. Each document has a connecting at home section that is made specifically for families.

For those who don't know about MyPeers it's a free online platform for the Early Care and Education Community. There are several communities within the platform, and we encourage you to join the Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Practices community, otherwise known as the CLRP community, and you can see the icon for the community there to help you more easily locate it.

The Individualized Professional Development Portfolio, or the IPD for short, is another online platform to support ongoing professional development, and we want to be sure to highlight this course on celebrating DLL's Spring into Practice. For those that haven't had the opportunity to check out the course during DLL celebration week be sure to check it out, and you can earn .2 CEUs for free after you complete the course. There are four modules. And then here is a sneak peek of some new resources that are coming soon to the ECLKC, the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center. There are these new professional learning guides, and we'll be announcing their availability on that MyPeers platform. So, be sure to sign up for the platform so you'll be up to speed on when they become released.

And then finally, just mark your calendars for our next PLA webinar. That will be happening July 16th on classroom language models. And as we conclude, we know this is an uncertain and stressful time for everyone. We hope that you all stay safe. We've included links to some COVID information on the ECLKC and other webpages in the green resource widget.

We want to just leave you with a loving kindness mediation, that you can do anytime or any place. We invite you to tell the next person you see or talk to, whether face-to-face or virtually, one thing that you appreciate about them. And we just want to end by thanking all of you for joining us. Thank you and stay safe.