• Consistent difficulty naming familiar and everyday objects;

• Using vague words like thing;

• Struggling to come up with the right word;

• Trouble following or remembering multistep directions;

• Difficulty reciting things in the right order (like the alphabet or nursery rhymes); and

• Mixing up the sounds in multisyllabic words (“mazagine” instead of “magazine” or “cimmanom” instead of “cinnamon”).

Some students don’t have trouble with language-based tasks, but struggle with math-based skills, like numeracy. Look for these common, noticeable signs in math:

• Trouble counting out loud (skipping over numbers or reciting them out of order);

• Trouble recognizing, creating, or replicating patterns;

• Trouble connecting number symbols to number words, such as knowing that the numeral 5 goes with the word five;

• Difficulty generalizing a number to more than one group of objects, such as understanding that six can be six crayons, six books, or six children; and

• Difficulty understanding one-to-one correspondence.

  (Morin, 2021)

• Not living up to their potential

• Not trying hard enough

• Off track

• Hiding out

• Missing homework

• Acting up

• Timing troubles

• Test Stress

• Emotionality

• Avoidance

  (Kidworldcitizen, 2018)

If only utilizing a single type of data, evaluators will only obtain a limited view of a child and their capabilities.

1. Offer the dominant language part of the day in the classroom, and then English or whatever the second language is at a different time in the classroom.

2. Using language for instruction.

3. When any adult or peer is speaking in a language other than the dominant language that the child has learned thus far—using visual cues, pictures, objects, pantomime, anything to help the child to be able to follow the directions and make that connection with that word and with what that word means or what that phrase means—giving the children ample opportunities to practice and use those words in context is a great way for children to develop their vocabulary and language skills.

4. Having cultural artifacts around the classroom, having some things labeled in the different languages of the classroom, but usually those are just going to be the things that you’re really going to refer to like the labeling of a certain play center that could be in the different languages, because that would be a center or source of linguistic input that would be used on a daily basis.

5. Use all of the techniques that used for helping any child to learn language with expanding on what they say and asking different types of questions and waiting long enough for the child to process. Using a lot of wait time would be a good strategy for teachers working with dual language learners. (What do teachers need to know about young dual language learners with disabilities? 2024)

1. They have an identified LD upon entering the class and may have to meet a world language requirement

2. They have no previously identified LD but upon utilizing language skills (like phonological awareness) in a new language, difficulties can come to light. Often times students with later diagnosed LD's may have created strategies or received other supports in early childhood that effectively allowed them to navigate their birth language challenges.

A Structured Literacy approach that benefits students who struggle to learn to read and spell in their native language also benefits students who have difficulties learning a foreign language. The following recommendations are based on the key principles of the Structured Literacy approach:

• Provide opportunities for students to practice and review a concept frequently (repetitive principle).

• Teach language concepts in a logical progression and help students to categorize concepts; also organize these language concepts from simple to complex (structured, sequential principles).

• Build on what students already know, and make the connection between the known and the new information explicit (cumulative principle).

• Systematically and explicitly teach the phonemes or speech sounds of the foreign language.

• Directly teach students the sounds of the letters in the foreign language and the letter(s) the sounds represent (alphabetic/phonetic principle).

• Show students how to think about a language concept to be learned and ask them to explain the concept in their own words; examples include rules for applying word endings, appropriate word order, and subject/verb agreement (metacognitive principle)

• Model for students the way to break apart words while reading, especially words with more than one syllable (analysis principle).

• Model for students the way to put parts of words back together for spelling (synthetic principle).

  (At-risk students and the study of Foreign Language in school 2020)