All Students Deserve Language-Rich Classrooms Effective instruction for multilingual learners is fun and lively, rich in discussions and student exchanges. It places a high value on the spoken word. Further, there are many approaches to teaching multilingual learners that
have universal application. The label “English learner” covers a lot of ground, from students who are new to English to those who are fluent in English. Of course, because students come from a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences, designing instruction for universal application is simply good design. Here’s more proof of that. Julie Washington has been researching language and dialect for decades, considering those points and many other related ones for years. Her recent work with Mark
Students need to see themselves as valued and present in the books they’re reading to develop a sense of self as readers.
Seidenberg (Washington & Seidenberg, 2021) makes clear that there’s a lot of overlapping benefit to language-rich approaches for anyone who speaks a home language that differs from the one they are exposed to at school, as is the case for many Black children, Indigenous children, or any students being raised in non-mainstream regions of the country, such as Appalachia. We’ve always believed learning at school should be fun and student-oriented and when there’s a compelling research base that proves its effectiveness, well, that’s about as good as it gets.
Reading and Writing, Speaking and Listening, Must Fill the School Day
The other compelling reason we emphasize language-rich classrooms is because of the considerable overlap between spoken English and written English. To us, it’s clear both forms of language should be leveraged to maximize all students’ learning. We’re not alone. According to Seidenberg and Borkenhagen (2020), “Reading depends on spoken language. A child doesn’t re-learn a language when they learn to read; they link what they’ve learned from talking and listening to what they’re learning about print.” We want to make sure students are learning a lot from reading and writing, talking and listening, and doing a lot of it.
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KNOW BETTER, DO BETTER: COMPREHENSION
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