ABSTRACT
With the politically and economically motivated migration of peoples around the globe, many preschool and primary schools in England are enrolling an increasing number of young children who speak languages other than English. Whilst this phenomenon adds rich diversity to the classroom, it also presents challenges for teachers about how to create inclusive communicative and social spaces for individual children from ethnic and linguistic minority backgrounds, particularly when working within the constraints of national curricula that assume ‘homogeneity and stability represent the norm’ (Creese and Blackledge, 2015: 20). Through the lens of two young boys in the early stages of learning English, this chapter explores how Vivian Gussin Paley’s storytelling and story-acting pedagogy (Paley, 1990, 1992, 2004) has creative and enabling potential for children to express themselves through multiple modes, such as actions and gaze as well as words, and how valuing multimodal narrating and acting can promote equity and celebrate diversity in the early years classroom.
