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The Multilingual Learning Toolkit is an online hub for research-based key principles, instructional strategies, and associated, free, practical, and easy-to-use resources that are geared towards educators who teach PreK-3rd Multilingual Learners. As the resource library continues to grow, make sure you stay connected for the latest updates by filling out the short sign-up form at the bottom of the page.
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Foundational Principles

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A collaborative effort among organizations and individual experts

The Multilingual Learning Toolkit is the result of the partnership between a diverse group of stakeholders, maximizing the expertise of local and national practitioners, researchers, and advocates who are champions for Multilingual Learners (MLs). The guide serves as an introduction to supporting young MLs in PreK-3rd Grade, sharing the foundational principles and evidence-based strategies for instruction that are critical for educators to know.
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Key foundational principles for educators working with Multilingual Learners
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Multilingual Learning Toolkit * Dual Language * Multilingualism

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Promoting the benefits of multilingualism and providing resources supporting Pre-K through 3rd grade multilingual children and teachers.

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How to Support Multilingual Learners (MLLs) in the Classroom

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Find best practices to support multilingual learners (MLLs) in the classroom.

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Preparing Teachers to Work with Multilingual Learners

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This collection examines a diverse range of approaches to multilingualism in teacher education programmes across Europe and North America. The authors investigate how pre-service teachers are being prepared to work in multilingual contexts and discuss the key features of current pre-service teacher education initiatives that address the increasing linguistic and cultural diversity evident in classrooms in their respective countries. The focus is not only on migrant-background learners but includes students from Indigenous, autochthonous and heritage language backgrounds, and speakers of minoritised regional varieties. The chapters contextualise, both historically and ideologically, the specific initiatives and measures taken in the participating countries. They also reveal the complexity of each educational context and the role that history, language policies and institutional and programmatic priorities play in the development and implementation of a multilingual focus in teacher education. In exploring how pre-service teachers are being prepared to work in multilingual contexts, the authors take a critical view of how multilingualism itself is conceptualised within and across contexts. The book highlights the valuable impact that explicit instruction on theories of multilingualism, pedagogies in multilingual classrooms and lived realities of multilingual children can have on the beliefs and practices of pre-service teachers.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners

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What will you do to promote multilingual learners’ equity? Our nation’s moment of reckoning with the deficit view of multilingual learners has arrived. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed and exacerbated long-standing inequities that stand in the way of MLs’ access to effective instruction. Recent events have also caused us to reflect on our place as educators within the intersection of race and language. In this innovative book, Sydney Snyder and Diane Staehr Fenner share practical, replicable ways you can draw from students’ strengths and promote multilingual learners′ success within and beyond your own classroom walls. In this book you’ll find • Practical and printable, research-based tools that guide you on how to implement culturally responsive teaching in your context • Case studies and reflection exercises to help identify implicit bias in your work and mitigate deficit-based thinking • Authentic classroom video clips in each chapter to show you what culturally responsive teaching actually looks like in practice • Hand-drawn sketch note graphics that spotlight key concepts, reinforce central themes, and engage you with eye-catching and memorable illustrations There is no time like the present for you to reflect on your role in culturally responsive teaching and use new tools to build an even stronger school community that is inclusive of MLs. No matter your role or where you are in your journey, you can confront injustice by taking action steps to develop a climate in which all students’ backgrounds, experiences, and cultures are honored and educators, families, and communities work collaboratively to help MLs thrive. We owe it to our students. On-demand book study-Available now! Authors, Snyder and Staehr Fenner have created an on-demand LMS book study for readers of Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners: Tools for Equity available now from their company SupportEd. The self-paced book study works around your schedule and when you′re done, you’ll earn a certificate for 20 hours of PD. SupportEd can also customize the book study for specific district timelines, cohorts and/or needs upon request.

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Supporting Multilingual Learners’ Participation in Secondary Career and Technical Education Programs

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Preparing Teachers to teach Multilingual Students. Teacher Learning & Teacher Diversity

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The Science of Reading, English Learners, and Multilingual Education

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English Language Learners

Teachers can make small changes to amplify language opportunities that create pathways toward success for English learners.

Designing instruction that is accessible to English learners (ELs), or multilingual learners, is of the utmost importance. It's simply not enough to make content available to learners. That's like being given a car but no keys to use it. Equitable instruction is instruction that provides every learner with what they need for academic success.

In recent years, there has been a positive shift in the way educators view and teach multilingual learners-recognizing the linguistic, academic, and cultural assets they bring. The reality is that multilingual learners enter our classrooms with unique lived experiences and traditions that add value to instruction. Teachers face the challenge of ensuring that multilingual learners are gaining content and developing language without falling behind in either. Multilingual learners who experience grade-level instruction with additional linguistic support tend to do better in school and have a greater chance of mastery.

But how does that happen when we have mountains of content to cover and grades to gather? How do we create lessons that are accessible and meaningful for multilingual learners? What does that look like in the lesson plans and in instructional practice?

Methods That Make Instruction Accessible to ELs

Multilingual learners weren't talking even when I asked them to. Lack of linguistic support, uncertainty about expectations, fear or anxiety about speaking in a new language, and other factors seemed to contribute to their silence.

Sometimes the talk was uncontrollably loud.

Conversations often seemed to stray from the topic.

1. Infuse instruction with peer-to-peer discussion and exploration. This student-centered practice allows multilingual learners to build their listening and speaking vocabularies as they negotiate meaning. There may be much content to cover, but hiding it behind a lecture that multilingual learners may not comprehend does little good. It's important for multilingual learners to uncover their understanding through interacting with peers.

Using open-ended questions and posting them for students to see.

Providing sentence stems for responses.

Intentionally pairing students for discussion and modeling the routine.

When I began carving out more space for student talk, despite the fact that quiet classrooms were encouraged by colleagues and some administrators, it was challenging for a few reasons:

Provide a similar text in the student'sfirst language.

Do a side-by-side of the original text and an audio version.

Give them a side-by-side of the original text and a text a few reading levels lower.

You may be experiencing similar struggles. I found that structuring the peer discussion alleviated these problems and created an environment that controlled the chaos and provided routines and expectations that my students needed. My multilingual learners' voices were being amplified, and it began to surface in their confidence, comfort, and writing, so I knew we were on the right track. Most of the challenges that seemed to keep multilingual learners from participating in speaking with peers were eliminated by my intentional and planned routines for speaking, such as these:

2. Offer adapted or engineered texts when reading materials are dense. As multilingual learners get older, a common challenge is that content and reading selections become more complex. You can adapt or engineer texts, chunking them into pieces with annotations and synonyms, and even use a multilingual learner's first language. Sometimes, adapting a text looks like providing a side-by-side of the original text:

3. Provide daily opportunities for written expression in all content areas with the use of scaffolds and accommodations. Daily writing can be brief, such as quick pieces that are about 3 minutes or sketch notes using visuals and words. Multilingual learners benefit from seeing teachers model writing expectations and examples at various levels of proficiency.

Other scaffolds and accommodations for writing include offering sentence starters or paragraph frames and encouraging drawing, labeling, and use of the first language. Multilingual learners at beginning levels of English proficiency pull from all of their language repertoires to access their knowledge and demonstrate what they understand and can do.

Students will perform at different levels. It took me a while to realize that my students' products didn't have to be the same. I remember expecting all my students to write lengthy essays. One of my newly arrived multilingual learners could do that, but not in English yet. He wrote his first essay primarily in his language. Stepping outside of my comfort zone was at first a challenge. How was I going to assess writing that I was unable to read? Through collaboration with colleagues who could read the language, I was able to assess my student's writing. Some teachers in similar situations have used apps to translate students' writing.

When modeling academic language and effective communication, use words from the word wall.

When reading aloud, use and point to a strategy from a reading anchor chart.

When modeling writing, show how to use a translation dictionary, thesaurus or other dictionary.

4. Utilize classroom resources. Resources such as word walls, anchor charts, and translation dictionaries can enhance multilingual learners' understanding of concepts, especially when they include pictorial or visual support. The most effective resources act as co-teachers when we're unable to assist multilingual learners as they work independently. But even this doesn't happen by magic.

Teachers can directly teach students how to use these resources by referring to word walls, anchor charts, and dictionaries:

When we model for learners how to use resources and remind them that they can use them too, they are more likely to do it independently.

Sometimes my husband (who is quite a bit taller than I am) drives my car, and when I get back into the driver's seat, I silently thank the car designers for their efforts in assuring that I'm able to adjust the mirrors, move the seat up and forward, and even move the steering wheel-I need to see the road ahead of me. Everyone does. This analogy is how I visualize us as lesson designers for multilingual learners who need to see and have access to their grade-level curriculum. We design the lessons, and we can provide the access.

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4 Practical Ways to Make Instruction Accessible for Multilingual Learners

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Teachers can make small changes to amplify language opportunities that create pathways toward success for English learners.

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4 Immediate Ways You Can Support Multilingual Learners

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The instructional strategies that support multilingual learners are strategies that increase rigor and academic gains for all students. Teachers do not have to

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Discover the value that each multilingual learner brings to the school community

Teachers of multilingual learners need to recognize their students' unique assets in order to create a learning community that develops their full potential. WIDA offers many resources to support you in understanding the strengths and needs of your multilingual learners.

The WIDA Can Do Philosophy highlights the assets that your students have developed in their homes and communities, including moving across languages, working with others, and learning about themselves and the world. When multilingual learners are encouraged to use all their ways of talking, being, and knowing to power their thinking and communicating, they engage more fully in learning and can contribute more to their classroom and school communities.

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Discover the value that each multilingual learner brings to the school communityTeachers of multilingual learners need to recognize their students' unique assets in order to create a learning community that develops their full potential. WIDA offers many resources to support you in understanding the strengths and needs of your multilingual learners.