Since I teach 9th grade, I always do some kind of school tour in the first week to make sure students know where important locations are in the building. Here, I have adapted the school tour worksheet to include elements of a linguistic landscape. In addition to asking students to locate key places like the nurse’s office, they are also invited to notice and document where and how they notice other languages present in the school. If students are able to use their phones, this could also be a visual activity in which they are invited to take pictures of what they notice.
Lesson Plan: Learning About Indigenous Language Revitalization Efforts
This lesson plan includes 2 materials and is a 2-day lesson: the daily slides and the NewsELA article. The lesson invites students to read, analyze, and discuss the power dynamics of indigenous languages and revitalization efforts for these languages in the present-day U.S.. During the mini lesson, many students drew connections to indigenous language practices from their home countries and continued to draw these connections during the 2-day exploration.