Abstract Book of the 9th International Conference on Innovative Research in Education
Year: 2026
[PDF]
From Policy to Practice: A Translanguaging-First CLIL Playbook for Elementary Classrooms (A Wilburn-Inspired Model)
Maria Mareco
ABSTRACT:
All bilingual programs encourage multilingualism in policy but curtail it in practice. This presentation fills this gap with the introduction of the Translanguaging-First CLIL Playbook, an action guide handbook to enable language policy for inclusion to be implemented into good practice in the classroom. Inspired by classroom experiences at Wilburn Elementary School in North Carolina, the playbook integrates Coyle’s (2010) 4Cs Framework, Meyer’s (2010) CLIL Pyramid, and García and Wei’s (2014) translanguaging theory into a practical toolkit for lesson design, scaffolding, and assessment. It provides out-of-the-box routines such as bilingual Think-Pair-Share, two-language journals, and multimodal narratives with Genially, Canva, and Book Creator to facilitate authentic connections among content and language. Participants also learn formative assessment techniques—language maps, reflection cards, and rubric banks—transforming learning into equity and transparency. When combined with this approach, practice relocates bilingual education as a form of empowerment, understanding students’ languages as keys to their minds, rather than barriers. By growing knowledge of how CLIL and translanguaging can remake schools from policy to practice and from silence to loud voice, participants will leave with a downloadable digital toolkit. This proposal encourages educators to imagine language diversity as the key to quality education by examining the potential of teaching in two or more languages to develop creativity, equity, and a sense of belonging in the classroom.
Keywords: Assessment, Bilingualism, Clil, Translanguaging, Teaching