Now You’re Speaking My Language: Creating a Successful Bilingual Storytime

Are you interested in creating a bilingual storytime at your library? Whether you are working with a Spanish speaking partner or are a fluent speaker, it can be daunting to create a bilingual storytime that supports families wishing not only to share their culture, but also support raising a bilingual child.

Bilingual storytimes are a great way to create a welcoming space for new families and strengthen a child’s early literacy skills. It allows non-english speaking families to see themselves and their culture through books, rhymes and movement. It is also an opportunity to nurture cognitive and language development for families in their native language as well as a chance for monolingual families to share in the cultural and linguistic diversity.

In this webinar, presenter Adilene Rogers will discuss how to create a Spanish-English bilingual storytime that is culturally inclusive and will strengthen the relationship with your Spanish speaking community. She’ll also cover the importance of early literacy practices on a bilingual child’s development. While this webinar focuses mainly on Spanish-English storytimes, the principles and theories can be used for any language.

At the end of this one-hour webinar, participants will:

• Learn the importance of bilingual storytime and how it supports families raising bilingual children
• Understand the importance of having culturally relevant material such as books, songs and rhymes
• Understand some of the common misconceptions of raising bilingual children and how to support parents who are raising their children bilingually.
• For librarians that are not fluent --be able to work with a partner to develop and present a bilingual storytime
• Learn some traditional Spanish songs and rhymes as well as different movement activities that can be used.

This webinar will be of interest to: youth services and children’s library staff, bilingual library volunteers, bilingual library professionals

Webinars are free of charge, you can pre-register by clicking on the Register Now button on this page. If you pre-registered you will receive an email with login link and a reminder email the day before the event.

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Presentation Material

Speaker's slides

Book List

Songs and Videos List

Recording transcript (txt file)

 

Keywords: storytime, bilingual storytime