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Activity to Get to Know Your Multilingual Students

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Activity to Get to Know Your Multilingual Students

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The purpose of this activity is to connect and support multilingual learners' assets.

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StoryWeaver.org is a free digital platform. It offers thousands of multilingual children's books that are FREE. Teachers can translate, create, and adapt books. Students can read books where they see their culture, language, and experiences represented. Parents can download books in their home language and read books with their children at home.

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Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Classroom Checklist

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Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Classroom Checklist

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The purpose of this culturally and linguistically responsive (CLR) checklist is to help educators intentionally evaluate and improve their classroom practices, materials, and environments to ensure they are inclusive, equitable, and supportive of all students, especially those from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

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Does your classroom library represent the communities that your students come from? Use this quick checklist to inventory your library.

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Lee and Low-Online Multicultural Children's Books

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Lee and Low-Online Multicultural Children's Books

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Lee & Low Books (leeandlow.com) is a family-run, independent, 100% minority-owned publisher founded in 1991 with a clear mission—to “publish beautiful books about everyone, for everyone.” It has grown to become the largest and most trusted multicultural children’s book publisher in the United States.

Lee & Low Books is an essential resource for educators seeking high-quality, multicultural literature. Its diverse catalog, strong focus on equity, and extensive teaching tools make it invaluable for building inclusive and empowering classroom libraries.

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About Us

Lee & Low Books is the largest multicultural children's book publisher in the country. We are also one of the few minority-owned publishing companies in the United States.

Founded in 1991, we have always been family-owned and independent, which means we publish what we want and aren't afraid to take risks. Our books have won major awards including the Coretta Scott King Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the NAACP Image Award, and many more.

Lee & Low Books is committed to publishing diverse books that are about everyone, for everyone. We are dedicated to cultural authenticity, and we make a special effort to work with new authors and illustrators of color.

We publish multicultural children's books for every age, including leveled books for beginning readers, picture books, early chapter books, middle grade, and young adult books. We also publish a wide selection of bilingual and Spanish language books.

Visit our testimonials page to see some of the people and organizations who support our work!

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Lee & Low Books is the largest multicultural children's book publisher in the United States. We are your diversity source.

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Teaching Reading to Children Who Speak African American English-AAE

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Teaching Reading to Children Who Speak African American English-AAE

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Understanding linguistic variation, especially African American English (AAE), has deepened my approach to teaching reading. Dr. Washington's video reinforced the importance of helping students extend their oral language skills to reading and writing—while affirming and respecting the language they bring from home. As an African American educator who grew up in a predominantly white environment, I wasn't always affirmed in my own dialect and was often encouraged to code-switch to be seen as educated.

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Teaching Reading to Children Who Speak African American English

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This is a collection of mentor text that teachers can use with their students to model writing skills such as grammar, informational, argumentative, and persuasive writing.

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The ability to hear, identify, manipulate, and substitute phonemes—the smallest units of sound that can differentiate meaning—in spoken words.

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The ability to understand that there is a predictable relationship between phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (the letters that represent those sounds in written language) in order to associate written letters with the sounds of spoken language.

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The ability to read text accurately, quickly, and expressively, either to oneself or aloud.

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The ability to read text accurately, quickly, and expressively, either to oneself or aloud.

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The ability to understand, remember, and make meaning of what has been read—this is the purpose for reading.

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This report, authored by Louisa Moats, translates the latest research on the importance of applying the Science of Reading into clear, accessible language for educators.

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Overview of phonics-What is it and why is it important?

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Word recognition skills involve knowing letter-sound relationships, such as the sound made by the letter m or by common letter patterns such as sh, as well as being able to apply that knowledge to decode unfamiliar words.

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People who criticize African American Vernacular English don’t see that it shares grammatical structures with more “prestigious” languages.

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The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR.

Ain't nobody got time for double negatives...said no grammar pedant ever. To a prescriptivist, using double negatives for actually emphasizing more negation is just the worst. If I'm not saying nothing, obviously I must be saying something. As the assumption goes, because two negatives must logically cancel each other out, people who use double negatives in this way must also logically be uneducated or unintelligent. This, of course, is a false belief that is still widely shared in mainstream American culture (possibly even among speakers who regularly use double negation themselves).

Like many language myths that are still fervently repeated, it's only since the eighteenth century that we became loath to use double negatives in this way (no thanks for nothing to the grammarian Robert Lowth) and to consider it wrong and illogical. Before then, speakers were using double negatives illogically daily (and probably twice on Sundays), from Chaucer to Shakespeare and many others. Surprisingly, it was not impossible that people could have no trouble understanding each other whatsoever. Nevertheless, standard English speech finally rid itself of this turbulent double negation, until it is now seen as not merely ungrammatical-it's also socially unacceptable.

It still is very much the case that many people, without thinking, can harbor negative assumptions about the different ways other people speak.

Well, why does this matter? As flippantly as we can talk of language myths, put simply, what's widely considered bad grammar, or bad language, can have truly problematic repercussions for how many people live, especially for those who speak dialects that aren't considered standard, mainstream, or prestigious. It still is very much the case that many people, without thinking, can harbor negative assumptions about the different ways other people speak. This can have a profound effect on how whole speech communities can live, learn, work, and even play. Getting job interviews, renting an apartment, raising kids to have better options and advantages, even getting through an unexpected, fraught interaction with the police- all these things can be made much harder simply because of a particular accent or dialect.

African American Vernacular English (AAVE) speech or Black English (often used as an umbrella term for the many varieties of speech used by African American communities) is a prime example of how a regular way of speaking can have a major impact on people's lives. On absolutely no scientific basis, linguistically consistent grammatical features like double negatives, along with other marked grammatical differences to standard American English, such as use of habitual be, as in "he be walkin'," or perfective, as in "he done did it," have stigmatized the speakers of Black English as linguistically backward, uneducated, or unintelligent.

Black speech has historically been maligned as just a broken form of English, but this is as unfair as it is wrong-many of its core grammatical structures can be found in many other languages. Those who consider themselves culturally aware might marvel at a politician's empty but seemingly erudite smattering of Ancient Greek, in which the double negative construction, for example, is correctly used to emphasize a negative meaning, not cancel it out. And the usual way to express a negative in oh-so-chic French is with two negative elements (ceci n'est pas une négation, par exemple).

These grammatical structures in influential foreign languages that are culturally valued by a wider mainstream society are often the very same systematic structures that many unthinkingly despise in more marked or less prestigious dialects of English, such as in Black English. For the grace of being another language, Black English speech might have been considered as linguistically civilized as a classical Greek or Latin, or as linguistically chic as French or Italian.

There's one kind of story, in which the rough-and-tumble speech of the people later acquires legitimacy and prestige as a valid, socially accepted language, through cultural objects such as the printed word, popular culture, and a community's linguistic pride. It happened to standard English, which was once a nonstandard creole of divergent linguistic influences, as it has to other languages of the world. So why not Black English? The dialects of an entire speech community have a perfect right to be respected as other, more prestigious languages are. What makes one system of speech a language and another a dialect and still another a despised, broken speech, after all, is subjective and political.

In fact, it once did happen that some tried to elevate the status of Black English to the level of a language in the eyes of the general public. For decades, linguists and other educators, pointing to the logic and science of language, have tried to convince people that Black English exists, that isn't just a politically correct label for a poor version of English but is a valid system of language, with its own consistent grammar. In 1996, with the unanimous support of linguists, the Oakland School Board voted to recognize AAVE, or the more politicized term "Ebonics" (a portmanteau of "Ebony" and "phonics"), as a community language for African American students, a decision which might have opened up much needed additional funding for education.

Instead it resulted in intense public backlash and derision due to the still widespread, incorrect belief that Black English was an inferior, uneducated form of English associated with illiteracy, poverty, and crime. It's hard for a language to get ahead when it keeps getting put down. Some linguists, such as John Russell Rickford, have noted how even sympathetic linguistic research, which has derived a lot of benefit and understanding from Black English grammar, can unknowingly focus on data that represents African American communities negatively, giving "the impression that black speech was the lingo of criminals, dope pushers, teenage hoodlums, and various and sundry hustlers, who spoke only in 'muthafuckas' and 'pussy-copping raps.'" The term "Ebonics" even now is used mockingly by some as a byword for broken English.

Perhaps no other variety of speech has been quite so significant, innovative, and influential to the development of standard American English.

But Black English is not just one monolithic dialect spanning the many millions of speakers across the country. There are rich regional and class differences with a deep linguistic history intertwined with stories of migration and movement, and there are dialects that grew to include more standard as well as vernacular forms. There's an almost relentless creativity to the linguistic innovations found in Black English. In fact, as linguists have found, there's a lot more that Black English speech can teach about language in general and a lot more that Black English has contributed to American cultural life, both past and present, than it may ever get back in kind, given its reputation as a broken language.

This is the remarkable twist to this tale. All along, while standard American English was busy convincing everyone that it was a superior dialect, it's Black English that's been a true cultural and linguistic force in contemporary society. Standard English is in fact deeply indebted to this so-called impoverished speech. It's Black English that has left its mark on the popular culture we participate in, sliding seamlessly into the language of art, music, poetry, storytelling, and social media. Perhaps no other variety of speech has been quite so significant, innovative, and influential to the development of standard American English.

Linguist Margaret G. Lee notes how black speech and verbal expressions have often been found crossing over into mainstream prestige speech, such as in the news, when journalists talk about politicians "dissing" each other, or the New York Times puts out punchy headlines like "Grifters Gonna Grift". These many borrowings have occurred across major historical eras of African American linguistic creativity. Now-common terms like "you're the man," "brother," "cool," and "high five" extend from the period of slavery to civil rights, from the Jazz Age to hip-hop: the poetry of the people. This phenomenon reflects how central language and the oral tradition are to the black experience. As Lee points out, from "the disguise language used by enslaved Africans to conceal their conversations from their white slave masters to the lyrics of today's rap music, [the magical power of] the word has been shaped by a time when, as observed by Harlem newspaper writer Earl Conrad, 'it was necessary for the Negro to speak and sing and even think in a kind of code.'"

It's a kind of code that's highly creative, and conducive to sharing. Despite this speech being "low prestige," there's a strong covert prestige to using African American vernacular speech. As outside the mainstream as it is, it's often seen as cool for rebellious outsiders to use these expressions, from fans of hip-hop and jazz to other marginalized but influential African American sources of language such as in camp or drag queen linguistics. It's a sign of a strong linguistic culture, tradition, and community that linguistic innovations can be so widely distributed and end up having such an outsize impact on the standard language.

A recent corpus study that looked at lexical innovation in social media found that African American users had a strong cultural impact on how language changes, starting from small but influential hubs and rapidly moving across the country before eventually appearing in mainstream use. The study found that "African American culture is an especially important source of lexical innovation [...]. Although African Americans are somewhat overrepresented on Twitter compared to the general population [...], they are still clearly in the minority, whereas three of our five common patterns of lexical innovation appear to be primarily associated with African American English, showing the inordinate influence of African American English on Twitter."

It's ironic that Black English speech is still dismissed and devalued as being linguistically broken, and at the same time is one of the richest sources of lexical innovation in English. It's clear that the linguistic creativity of Black English and African American vernacular speech, which across history has contributed so much to standard American English and American culture, is something to celebrate, not despise. It's not just another language. To those who speak it, and to those who feel its cultural impact-Black English matters.
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People who criticize African American Vernacular English don't see that it shares grammatical structures with more "prestigious" languages.

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What is Translanguaging and How is it Used in the Classroom?

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What is Translanguaging and How is it Used in the Classroom?

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For years, research into the best instructional approaches for students identified as English learners has pointed to the concept of translanguaging.

Identified by bilingual education researcher Ofelia García, it's both a skill set and a total shift in the way language is thought of, used, and taught in K-12 classrooms where multiple languages are honored and addressed, even as English remains the dominant language of instruction, said Marybelle Marrero-Colon, the associate director of professional development for the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Researchers are looking into how it can be applied to formal assessments, such as state standardized tests on which English learners might struggle to demonstrate their academic proficiency because they are tested in an unfamiliar language.

Here's a look at what translanguaging means in the context of classroom instruction and how all educators, including monolingual English-speaking teachers, can cultivate spaces for translanguaging to occur.

Translanguaging is the ability to move fluidly between languages and a pedagogical approach to teaching in which teachers support this ability.

In translanguaging, students are able to think in multiple languages simultaneously and use their home language as a vehicle to learn academic English.

A student could be reading an article about the solar system in English, but in their brain, they are also thinking and making connections in Spanish. They might annotate in Spanish or first write down reading comprehension responses in Spanish and then figure out how to provide the responses in English, said Marrero-Colon.

It's all about encouraging students to access their full linguistic repertoires, said Emily Phillips Galloway, an assistant professor at the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University.

Translanguaging is also multimodal. More research is underway, for instance, on hearing impaired translanguaging by students who are part of families with American sign language, Spanish sign language, and signs families create for themselves, said Maria Cieslak, the professional development content manager at the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Teachers can engage in a variety of activities that deliberately encourage translanguaging, ranging from providing vocabulary in multiple languages to collaborative translation opportunities. The goal is to get students translanguaging as a practice that can be leveraged toward supporting literacy outcomes and engagement, as well as other academic endeavors.

For example, two students could be assigned to solve a word problem, and one might be stuck on a word in English. The two students can then use an equivalent word in their home language to make sense of what the word problem is asking of them, Phillips Galloway said.

Or in group activities, students can be prompted to share with the rest of the class how something taught in English would make sense in Spanish by highlighting similar and different grammatical structures between the two languages, Marrero-Colon said.

"When you translate, you don't have to do it word for word. You're really trying to capture the feeling of that text," Marrero-Colon said.

Once teachers start doing these activities, research has found that students who have not spoken before start speaking and students who were not as engaged in text-comprehension activities suddenly are, she added. That's occurring because they are being encouraged to use their home language in class to think about language use overall.

Translanguaging extends beyond translation to something where students gain an understanding of how language functions and works.

Although translation activities are a way to engage in translanguaging, it's not word-for-word translation. It's about a student using the words and thoughts they have in their home language to make sense of English and then be able to respond in English, said Kia Johnson, the director of PreK-12 language and literacy at the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Translanguaging requires students to think about language components such as the placement of adjectives, what cognates are in various languages, and more in multiple languages at once, Phillips Galloway said.

Teachers don't have to speak the home languages of students to help them engage in translanguaging.

It does require teachers to be comfortable being a learner themselves as students teach them what they know about their own language. Some teachers may fear that students may engage in off-task behavior in languages the teachers don't understand, but research has found that in such cases, teachers are still able to register what is going on and get students back on task, Phillips Galloway said.

She also said that teachers who work in states with laws requiring English-only instruction can and should still allow students to use other languages in the classroom to help them access academic content.

The key, Marrero-Colon said, is flexibility. For instance, a student may need to write an essay in English. They can instead start with building a PowerPoint primarily of images that convey a story or meaning. The teacher can then use the PowerPoint to help students come up with words and phrases, then move to sentences and paragraphs, and so on.

All students can benefit from a classroom welcoming of translanguaging because few use academic English at home, regardless of their home language.

For instance, Black students may be fluent in African American Vernacular English and can use translanguaging activities to engage in academic classroom English, Johnson said.

An example of English-only translanguaging is asking students to turn William Shakespeare's sonnets into modern pop songs, because it is a use of language in different registers, or levels of formality, Phillips Galloway said.

Students are also more interested in acquiring more languages after hearing their peers use their home languages, which helps them succeed in an increasingly global society, she added.

The more opportunities students have to use language, whether that's English or not, breeds more language use, which is then associated with language learning.

"I think the mistake that we often make is that we don't help students to make the connections between the linguistic resources that they bring in languages other than English," Phillips Galloway said. "And in the course of doing that, we take a whole set of resources that could be used for comprehending texts as they read in English, or learn to write text in English, we take those resources off the table."

More research has found that allowing students to participate in translanguaging helps English learners eventually outperform their monolingual peers because they become more flexible in thinking about and using language in academic contexts, Marrero-Colon said.

Improved curriculum, professional development, and mindsets around the value of home languages can all help schools to encourage translanguaging and support students in the process.

Phillips Galloway is working with colleagues on a curriculum that better guides teachers in translanguaging activities since not all curricular materials recognize the concept.

Researchers at the Center for Applied Linguistics, including Cieslak, also work on professional development and policy discussions that help educators and policymakers alike understand how English learners bring with them linguistic assets that should be nurtured for overall academic success.

"It's about understanding cultural identity, and my language is part of my identity," Cieslak said. "And I'm going to naturally translanguage, whether you tell me I can or cannot."

Ileana Najarro is a reporter for Education Week covering race and opportunity in schools across the country.

A version of this article appeared in the August 16, 2023 edition of Education Week as What Is Translanguaging and How Is It Used in the Classroom?

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What Is Translanguaging and How Is It Used in the Classroom?

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Research into the best instructional approaches for students classified as English learners has pointed to the concept of translanguaging.

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This book is a must have if you teach multilingual students. An evidence-based guide to providing English learners in Pre-K–Grade 6 with explicit, systematic instruction on language and literacy fundamentals.

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Literacy Foundations for Literacy Learners

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Transitioning from Word Walls to Sound Walls

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Transitioning from Word Walls to Sound Walls

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You are welcome to print copies for non-commercial use, or a limited number for educational purposes, as long as credit is given to Reading Rockets and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact the author or publisher listed.

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Transitioning from Word Walls to Sound Walls

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Sound walls support students with learning those tricky high-frequency words. They also support students in retaining and learning to read unfamiliar words on their own. A sound wall does the work of matching our articulation of speech sounds/phonemes to the letters/graphemes that represent those sounds.

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Textbook for Explicit, High-Quality Instruction

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Textbook for Explicit, High-Quality Instruction

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This is a must have book for teaching students using the Science of Reading.

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Speech to Print Language Essentials for Teachers

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The book is packed with engaging text and tools, an assessment scale, and high quality ready-to-use lessons including text phrasing and tonality, echo reading, word ladders, and more! 

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I use this book at the beginning of an intervention cycle to explain to students how the brain learns to read. The book is presented in an easy to understand way.

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Dyslexia is a learning disorder that primarily affects reading and spelling abilities. People with dyslexia often have difficulty recognizing words, decoding them, and understanding written text, despite having normal intelligence and access to proper teaching.

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This is a great video that demonstrates how to accurately articulate the 44 phonemes.

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Book: 99 Activities for Teaching Multilingual Learners

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Book: 99 Activities for Teaching Multilingual Learners

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The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) Model is a highly effective approach for teaching multilingual learners. This second edition offers brand-new, classroom-ready strategies to build vocabulary, deliver engaging lessons, and make academic content more accessible for English learners.

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99 ideas and activities for teaching English Language Learners with the SIOP model book second edition

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This book is awesome! Provides strategies and activities to teach your students how to write.

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This book is a practical guide that translates research into actionable, teacher-friendly strategies for teaching writing across grades K–12. The book is accessible and offers clear, step-by-step instructions, making it ideal for educators seeking to enhance their writing instruction. It includes a variety of classroom-tested strategies, such as goal-setting, brainstorming, and peer revising, along with before-and-after student examples that demonstrate the effectiveness of these approaches. This resource is invaluable for teachers aiming to support struggling writers and improve writing outcomes in their classrooms.

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Reading Rockets
Website: readingrockets.org
Offers reading strategies, tips, videos, and booklists for parents of children from preschool through grade 3.

PBS Parents – Reading Milestones
Website: pbs.org/parents
Provides literacy activities based on age and development, with fun reading games and book suggestions.

Scholastic Parents – Reading Help
Website: scholastic.com/parents
Book recommendations, printable activities, and expert advice to boost reading at home.

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Starfall
Website: starfall.com
Interactive phonics-based games and read-along stories ideal for younger children.

The Measured Mom – Free Printables & Activities
Website: themeasuredmom.com
Offers evidence-based phonics games, alphabet activities, and beginner reader printables.

Reading Bear
Website: readingbear.org
A free online program teaching beginning readers vocabulary and phonics using multimedia presentations.

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Storyline Online
Website: storylineonline.net
Celebrities read children's books aloud with visuals — supports listening comprehension and engagement.

CommonLit (Grades 3–12)
Website: commonlit.org
Free reading passages with comprehension questions; includes parent guidance and Spanish texts.

Into the Book
Website: reading.ecb.org
Designed for children to practice comprehension strategies like predicting, visualizing, and summarizing.

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UFLI Foundations (University of Florida Literacy Institute)
Website: ufli.education.ufl.edu
Research-based phonics resources and videos for parents to help with decoding and structured literacy.

SightWords.com
Website: sightwords.com
Free games, flashcards, and practice worksheets for Dolch and Fry word lists.

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Epic! (Ages 2–12)
App & website: getepic.com
Digital library with thousands of books. Free for teachers; parents can get a limited free version or subscribe.

Homer Reading
Website: learnwithhomer.com
Personalized learn-to-read program based on phonics and children’s interests (subscription required).

Teach Your Monster to Read
Website: teachyourmonstertoread.com
Free (web) or paid (app) phonics-based game for early readers, engaging and educational.

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Please use this link to provide feedback for this Literacy Leadership Communication Tool. There are only five questions and should only take 1-2 minutes. Thank you so much for your feedback!

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A bilingual website for educators and families of English language learners. Simply search “SIOP” to find a wealth of articles, strategies, and helpful resources.

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A bilingual site for educators and families of English language learners