Incorporating Character Education And Bilingual Literacy Into Early Childhood Classroom: Practical Ideas

Abstract

Character education and literacy becomes prominent issue in today’s education and it is suggested to be taught earlier. Since children have unique characteristics in learning, specific methods and media are frequently required to make them engage during the lesson. This article attempts to elaborate practical ideas for classroom practice for the inclusion of character education and bilingual literacy by using bilingual big book. Bilingual big book here refers to a big book with pictures created by the teachers. It uses teacher-made stories delivered in two languages: Bahasa Indonesia and English. Teacher-made stories are suggested for the character education so the stories can be adjusted with the students’ language abilities and preferences. Teacher made-stories also enable them to set the targeted moral values. In this paper, it will provide step-by-step activities to implement the bilingual big book in the classroom. It will also give some pedagogical recommendations for teachers to engage young learners in learning English. It is expected that this article can benefit teachers of early childhood for promoting bilingual literacy and inserting character education.