Social Studies Middle School Guide

Canyons School District

Instructional Supports Department

Supporting Multilingual Learners Implementation Tools and Resources

Critical Actions for Educators —-------------------------- ● Help your student(s) feel welcome, learn how to pronounce their name, and even with the language barrier, do your best to learn something about their background ● Create a culturally sensitive classroom with positive relationships ● A student who speaks the same home language can be a partner to help acclimate students and clarify instructions. Partner students should be consulted prior to assigning them ● Encourage using multiple languages together in the classroom ● Use this checklist to scaffolds and supports while teaching grade level content ● Engage students with WISR in every lesson (Writing, Inquiry, Speaking & Listening, Reading & Viewing) help support Newcomers ● Provide linguistic

Supporting Multilingual Learners (MLs) in the classroom begins with having an asset-based mindset focusing on the experiences and skills that ML students bring to the classroom that will assist in their learning. Linguistically and culturally diverse learners bring valuable assets to the classroom and enrich the school community.

With intentionally designed instructional supports, multilingual students can simultaneously learn grade-level content and expand their knowledge of English across the four modes of communication: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Teachers can support ML students in their learning by integrating the use of language into student actions in the classroom. This can be achieved by planning lessons and instructional supports with the WISR learning strategy to increase language production in daily classroom activities. Using WISR increases engagement and rigor for all students, while also helping ML students practice and acquire academic language.

Lesson planning using WISR can be a helpful way to think about supports for language acquisition. Examples of using WISR to plan supports that are good for all students but essential for multilingual learners might include the following: ● Writing : Providing opportunities that allow students to summarize their learning writing in their own language, and then using a translation tool to submit work to the teacher. ● Inquiry : Using an inquiry or essential question to frame the purpose for the lesson that is annotated and includes visuals. ● Reading : Providing opportunities for students to read or view informational text, graphics, data tables, charts, works of art, etc. that include specifc translated words and/or visuals to support understanding. ● Speaking : Providing opportunities for students to discuss new learning and connect it with prior knowledge with structured discussion protocols, sentence stems, and word banks.