Building Bridges with Bilingual Books and Multicultural Resources

by Anneke Vanmarcke Forzani, Dr. Heather Leaman

Are you trying to build an inclusive and culturally responsive classroom? The numerous cross-curricular diversity activities, multicultural lesson plans, and literacy games in this book will save K-5 teachers and homeschooling parents hundreds of hours. Organized in an easy-to-use fashion, this manual will help educators to engage dual language learners and families, support the academic and social development of ESL students, and promote cultural awareness and understanding.

Written by a multicultural education expert and founder of www.LanguageLizard.com, this book provides the tools you need for culturally responsive teaching:

Comprehensive Multicultural Lesson Plans that meet Common Core Standards and include accommodations for ESL students. Themes include:
- Cultural Awareness and Diversity

- Folktales, Fables, Myths, and Legends

- Holidays/Festivals

10 Diversity Activities Using Bilingual Books to Promote Literacy and Language Awareness.
10 Games from Around the World
Foods and Crafts from Around the World
Diverse Language Profiles
Unique Holidays to Promote Multiculturalism and Literacy
Community-Building Handouts (Includes "Hello in Different Languages" handout)
Online Resources and Links
Special Bonus Material
This book gives you the resources you need to embrace diversity in your educational environment.

"This is an amazing resource! . . . This book will be so useful to so many!" - Caia Schlessinger, President of NJTESOL/NJBE

236 pages, Paperback

Published November 27, 2019

About the author

Anneke Vanmarcke Forzani is the President and Founder of Language Lizard (https://www.LanguageLizard.com), which provides multicultural resources in over 50 languages to schools, libraries, and literacy organizations. She has presented workshops about using multicultural resources in diverse classrooms at educational conferences. She also writes about multicultural issues online and manages https://blog.LanguageLizard.com - Supporting Multicultural Classrooms & Bilingual Families. Anneke speaks Dutch, French, and Japanese. She is the author of the children's books Happy After All, Who Are We?, and With Flying Colors: Color Idioms, and the teacher's resource Building Bridges with Bilingual Books and Multicultural Resources.

Reviews

[Kelly Hobbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was gifted a digital copy of this book from Anneke Vanmarcke Forzani through the Multicultural Children's Book Day. I am an extremely passionate ESL Teacher in Texas and am especially excited by the Cultural Awareness and Diversity theme unit. It has been challenging to build campus-wide engagement, but I am excited to try this plan next school year. I hope it will lead to greater parental involvement earlier in the year as we celebrate Bilingual Child Month next October.

[Rachel Funez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was gifted a copy of this book to review for multicultural children’s book day by Anneke Vanmarcke Forzani, and Language Lizard, LLC.

I found this book to be an insightful and needed educational resource. It begins by talking about the increasing diversity in American schools, and the challenges and discrimination minority students often face. For example, it talks about how some educators may devalue a child’s dual language abilities, rather than viewing them as an asset. Other educators may fail to reach out to immigrant parents and engage them in their child’s educational experience, often due to communication difficulties.

This book provides teachers with resources to help them create an inclusive learning environment that accepts differences and celebrates diversity. There’s a whole section on multicultural lesson plans, with fun themes including folktales and holidays. The lesson plans utilize multicultural picture books highlighting various cultures, and they include games, discussion ideas, activities, and tips for accommodations/differentiation.

There is also a section with activities and games that teachers and parents can use to support multiculturalism. One of the activity suggestions I liked was to have a teacher read a book out loud at school in the school language, and have the parents read the same book at home in their home language. There are also fun games from around the world, multicultural crafts, and international recipes you can try at school or at home.

All in all, I thought this was a great resource for teachers and parents with some excellent information and resources to promote multiculturalism, diversity, and inclusion.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Used this as part of my twin’s home education curriculum. Amazing lesson plan ideas that are adaptable to different subjects and ages. The set story books for each lesson plan are quite expensive to buy from the website but I found someone reading most of them on YouTube so was able to make it more budget friendly that way. It’s a great way to open kids up to diversity and how each family and culture has their own traditions and ideas for things that you might not even think about (like hiccups and the tooth fairy). It’s opened up lots of discussions. Highly recommend!

[Christina Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this and cannot wait to use some of the ideas in my classroom - full review to come soon!