Page 37

Section 6: Quality Child Care 37 Supporting Dual-Language Learners (DLLs)3 • Provider conducts annual home language surveys and uses data to guide assessment, family/ caregiver engagement, instruction, curriculum and learning resources, and personnel needs. • Provider ensures family/caregiver engagement activities, and all forms of communication, are provided in families’ home language, with the aid of a trained interpreter as needed, and that information on the benefits of bilingualism and the home language are shared. • Provider provides both monolingual and bilingual teachers with ongoing professional development focusing on how to provide valid assessments and instruction to children who speak different varieties of English and children who are DLLs, including children who are DLLs with disabilities. • Provider assesses DLLs, including those with suspected or identified disabilities, in their home language and English, as appropriate. Speakers of different varieties of English are not penalized on assessments for the way they speak. • Provider uses culturally sustaining curricula that centers children’s cultures and languages, shows high expectations, and embeds authentic, cultural themes and materials into lessons. • Provider embeds all the home languages represented in the classroom, even when the bulk of instruction occurs in English. The home languages are embedded by presenting vocabulary in home languages, having classroom materials, songs and books available in-home languages, conducting storybook readings in home languages and using visuals to facilitate English comprehension. • Provider delivers instruction in the home language or in a dual-language model if more than a third of children share the same home language. Family Engagement + Leadership3 • Provider has written a family engagement policy that stresses partnership and includes ongoing elicitation of family input on programmatic operations, shared decision-making, and opportunities to engage in classroom or school activities and advocacy and leadership opportunities. • Provider materials use inclusive language to represent the diversity in family structure. • Family leadership training sessions are led by and for families. • Provider has a family coordinator tasked with partnering with families to address their needs (e.g., access to job training, establishing a medical home or housing vouchers), elicit input, and coordinate accessible family engagement activities and relationships. • Provider ensures family-directed materials, like flyers, are available in languages spoken in the home/facility and across literacy levels. • Provider ensures family engagement activities and meetings are held at a variety of hours to accommodate diverse work and family schedules.