Linguistic Landscapes as an Activity to Support Multilingual Learners in Mainstream Classrooms (by Jennifer Burton)

From March 17 to October 11th, 2022, the Canadian government approved 302,071[1] temporary resident applications supporting Ukrainian nationals and their family members affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These Ukrainian children and their families bring a variety of skills, resources and languages, contributing to Canada’s multiple linguistic and cultural landscape. Yet, educational institutions continue to promote monolingual ideologies and classroom practices, reinforcing a linguistic hierarchy that privileges English and French (Bale et al., forthcoming; Haque, 2012). To counter monolingual practices, educators working with multilingual learners, such as the recent Ukrainian arrivals, can engage classroom-wide activities that draw on their diverse skills, knowledge, languages, cultures, identities, and lived experiences, as these are intrinsic and important parts of their learning through an activity known as linguistic landscapes.

What are Linguistic Landscapes?

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