ABSTRACT
Every year young children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are entering early childhood programs throughout the United States. Since language is a vitally important tool needed to communicate ideas and negotiate understandings, their teachers are actively pursuing strategies to celebrate and extend the children’s linguistic abilities. Progettazione is an Italian term with a specific and multilayered meaning used by the educators in Reggio Emilia to describe their flexible approach to the teaching-learning process. Many early childhood teachers, who often are compelled to follow standards-based mandated curriculum, are seeking information and inspiration from the Reggio Emilia Approach. However, they often find the construct of progettazione complex and challenging to understand and implement. In this chapter, we discuss the learning dimensions of progettazione that support language. By documenting and analyzing the shared vocabulary of multilingual learners during learning experiences, teachers can more fully respect the varied identities and cultures of children. We share two stories exemplifying progettazione in practice with emergent bilingual children used to connect multilingual learning and authentic daily life that is the basis for all language learning. Since currently there is often limited support for early childhood teachers in multilingual classrooms, it is our hope that the strategies we propose will provide teachers with pertinent usable information promoting this pleasure of learning through progettazione.
