The activities in this section are consistent with the language awareness approach, and are guided by the following criteria:

• providing a safe environment where children feel confident, preventing a sense of shame, embarrassment, and insecurity;
• making different languages visible in the classroom/school, before starting to work on the children’s language repertoires. Even if in a limited way, this helps children to feel safe and to understand that it is ‘normal’ to talk about different languages;
• linking every suggested activity to the children’s experiences and perspectives;
• placing value on all languages (languages in the school curriculum, native languages, minority languages, dialects, but you may also consider body language, other codes of communication), not just on the languages that are more widely represented. Even if only a child speaks a language, that language should be included;
• providing engaging and playful ways to explore languages, one’s own linguistic repertory and biography, nurturing motivation and enjoyment;
• valuing families’ and children’s resources;
• involving children as protagonists, researchers and key-informants on their experience.