As a highly diverse and multicultural international school with 80% non-native English speaking students and a robust Mother Tongue program, NIST introduced a literacy initiative designed to bring multiliteracies and a sense of identity into our elementary classrooms through the lens of reading and writing. With the support of a Literacy Coach and visiting experts, we reviewed our current practice from Early Years to Year 6 and found opportunities for translanguaging, identity mapping, and exploring culturally relevant texts that offer mirrors, windows, and doors for children to see themselves in the world around them. By redesigning our approach to reading and writing workshop, we systematically uncovered the cultural and linguistic assets that our multilingual students bring to the classroom, making the learning experience more authentic and responsive for all students.The success of this project relied on the successful collaboration between homeroom and specialist teachers, school leadership and our parent community.
