Teaching literacy to newly arrived pupils

What is it about?

In this research we examined strategies for teaching literacy to migrant pupils in linguistically diverse classrooms. A questionnaire was administered to 45 teachers in Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium who work with newly arrived pupils to assess their knowledge, attitudes, and needs regarding teaching strategies. The results revealed that although most teachers are aware of general literacy strategies, they do not adapt them based on their pupils' mother tongues. Generally, teachers lack knowledge of specific language features and strategies, such as the differences between orthographic systems, pinyin and the dual-route model. The main hindrance to using mother tongues is the teachers' lack of language knowledge and insufficient adequate materials, strategies, and resources. To enhance the teaching of migrant pupils, we proposed four recommendations: (1) videos explaining mother tongue characteristics, (2) training on specific strategies, (3) new materials tailored to learner types and (4) a virtual platform for teacher collaboration.

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Photo by Ryan Wallace on Unsplash

Photo by Ryan Wallace on Unsplash