👋 ELLMEnet is a new, international, and free academic and professional network. 🗣️ It offers a space for academics, teachers, and families to share experiences and research. 🎯 We aim to consolidate the area of early multilingual education! 👉 Join us at https://t.co/Z3PForInIH!

‼️Coming up in August 2024: The 13th International Conference on Third Language Acquisition and Multilingualism University of Groningen (NL) 29-31 August 2024 ➡️Keynotes: Ad Backus Joana Duarte Viorica Marian Website: https://t.co/jxaG3nTgYa

Many thanks to all presenters for their contributions & to the attendees for their questions/comments. We were excited to reunite with the vibrant ELLMEnet community, and look forward to seeing many of you in our upcoming events! 😀

Onto open discussion! The idea of putting children, & their needs, at the centre of learning seems to resonate with the audience. Making children feel safe & welcome should be the priority: teachers need to mix languages & use multimodal resources for children's well-being.

He likes to mix languages in certain situations (e.g. during games). Mixing can help children gradually develop their vocabulary. Emmanuel highlights that visuals & gestures can help develop language. He argues that "children should be the main characters of their own learning"!

Emmanuel Ceballos is the final speaker of our webinar. He talks about his diverse environments that he's taught in and the different challenges that he's faced. He emphasises the importance of fun & discovery for children. Multilingualism can be used as a fun & novel tool!

Michael states that children's dominant language is Hebrew, so it's important to create a school environment that encourages the use of Arabic. Children can speak Arabic after 3 mos but still prefer to interact in Hebrew. Michael believes that education can bridge the gap!

We move to our third presenter: Michael Farjun - director of the bilingual Arabic-Hebrew kindergarten in Haifa. Each class has an Arabic & a Hebrew teacher. Each activity is led by one teacher while the other one supports children. Teachers bring their culture to their classroom.

Code-switching is, therefore, encouraged: Sarah says that it should be integral to lesson-planning. Teachers can use different forms of communication (e.g. gesture, movement, drawing) to make multilingual learners feel included. Cross-school collaboration is important!

The second presenter is Sarah Arranz - who "proudly lead[s] a dual language school". She presents the history of teaching Spanish in the US. She talks about how schools need to change their mindsets to accommodate & nurture multilingual learners, their languages & cultures.

Language mixing is key in doing so! But, based on Angela's experience, as children get older, the use of the first language (L1) can decrease. Children also mix the languages, but do so in a sophisticated way & use taught vocabulary. Visual cues are helpful in reducing L1 use.

Our own @CofinoAngela is the first presenter (as well as one of the webinar's main organiser!). She gives a background about the linguistic status quo in Spanish kindergartens, and her personal practices to maximise the children's learning whilst helping them feel comfortable.

Starting now: the ELLMEnet 2nd #webinar on #languagemixing and the use of #mothertongue in the classroom. Our co-chair, Prof Mila Schwartz is introducing the network and our event! Looking forward to hearing from practitioners around the world!

Just a week until our 2nd #webinar: “To mix or not to mix languages in #preschool #education". Join us on 5 Oct at 16:00 CET to hear from & discuss with early years practitioners from around the world! 🌎 Reserve your spot now to receive the Zoom link: https://t.co/7Q9zyBGdOb…

📣 Exciting news! 📣 The 2nd International Conference on Early Language Learning and Multilingual Education in Early Childhood (#ELLME24) is now accepting submissions! Where? University of Granada When? 5-6 Sep 2024 Send your abstract by 20 Dec 2023: https://t.co/JnesIkBuKH!

Invited speakers: 🇪🇸 Angela Àlvarez-Cofiño (@CofinoAngela) 🇺🇸 Sarah Arranz 🇮🇱 Mihael Farjun 🇲🇽 Emmanuel Ceballos After the teachers share their experience on L1 introduction in the classroom, there will time for discussion between panelists & attendees.

Description: - Should teachers include more than one language at the same time? - How many languages should be introduced? - How should the presence of more than one language in the classroom be addressed? Preschool teachers from different contexts will tackle these questions!

We are pleased to invite you to our 2nd #webinar: “To mix or not to mix languages in preschool education. Practitioners' voices around the world” 📅 5 October 2023 🕑 16:00 CET 📍 Zoom 🎟️ Reserve your spot: https://t.co/jN97TVzhQh The event is free & open to all!

Desde la @ELLMEnet estamos invitando a docentes, investigadoras e investigadores mexicanos, especializados e interesados en la 𝗮𝗱𝗾𝘂𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗼́𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗹 𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗷𝗲 𝘆 𝗲𝗹 𝗺𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘂̈𝗶𝘀𝗺𝗼 𝗲𝗻 𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗽𝗮𝘀 𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗮𝘀, (+)

And the best thing? You can join for free, wherever in the world you are! Follow the link to sign up: https://t.co/AsheDt6DDo.

✨ You can participate in our biannual conference, set to take place at the beautiful University of Granada! ✨ You can be considered for various publication possibilities that our hard-working team will be putting together!