With the unprecedented increase of forced displacement in recent years, there has been a growing concern with how children from migrant and refugee backgrounds adjust to resettlement in Western schools. Adopting a sociocultural approach to science education, the authors explore how scientific concepts related to the water cycle and practices such as modelling are realized multimodally through play. By means of two constructive and imaginative play activities, block building and scrapbook making, illustrative examples showcase how four children from migrant and refugee backgrounds repurposed various multimodal resources to make sense of scientific concepts, use scientific language, and problem solve in relation to their life experiences beyond the classroom. Implications encourage teachers to consider designing content‐area language instruction infused with play‐based activities to give rise to alternative avenues through which emerging bi/multilingual learners can take risks, be engaged cognitively, and apply their new knowledge creatively.

ResumoNos dias atuais, as teorias fundamentadas nos Novos Letramentos representam uma importante referência para o ensino de Língua Inglesa no Brasil, propondo uma educação linguística que, ao mesmo tempo, possa fortalecer a consciência crítica e favorecer a agência cidadã. Nessa perspectiva, o presente artigo relata a experiência de um projeto de extensão voltado para o ensino de inglês para adolescentes e jovens, com foco na profissionalização e no letramento crítico, com o objetivo de evidenciar de que forma a proposta curricular e metodológica do projeto, além de promover o desenvolvimento do conhecimento da língua inglesa, constituiu-se um espaço de engajamento dialógico e de expansão de perspectiva dos participantes. O estudo foi desenvolvido com base na análise de fragmentos das aulas, registrados em vídeo, dos planos de aula e material didático utilizado, além das postagens dos jovens participantes acerca dos temas abordados em uma página do projeto em uma rede social. As categorias que guiaram a interpretação dos dados se referem a etapas constituintes das aulas e consistem em: preparação, exploração, problematização e expansão (EDMUNDO, 2012); e ainda: experiências com o conhecido, experiências com o novo, conceituações, conexões locais e globais, expansão de perspectiva, transformação (MONTE-MOR, 2010;DUBOC, 2015). No final, argumenta-se a favor da transposição dessa abordagem, desenvolvida em um espaço não escolar em João PessoaParaíba (organização não-governamental), para o espaço da escola, de forma a ampliar, na educação básica, as possibilidades de uma aprendizagem da língua inglesa mais significativa e capaz de empoderar adolescentes e jovens no uso da linguagem.

In 2021, more than 80 million people worldwide will have been forced to flee their homes. Upon arrival in their new country, families may endure numerous hardships, yet succumbing to these challenges is not their single story. To understand how migrant‐background and refugee‐background children imagine more liveable futures beyond social and education barriers, financial stress and unresolved emotional issues, our study focuses on the stories that 8‐ to 10‐year‐old learners created while playing with building toys and stacking blocks in a Canadian elementary school. Drawing on the interconnected frameworks of story‐telling, identity, creative citizenship and play‐based pedagogies, our case study of 11 students illustrates that, in response to an invitation to support their real or imagined communities, learners engaged in literacy practices, built on their lived experiences and imagined strong identities to create stories of social responsibility and awareness, emphasising the human needs of securing food and fresh water, ensuring safety, and connecting and caring for the community. Our findings may encourage teachers to consider play‐based storytelling to address out‐of‐school social factors in their classrooms and to capitalise on students' inquiries to design interdisciplinary projects that can develop students' literacies and promote social activism.

No abstract