Teaching Multilingual Learners: Secondary Tip of the Week

There are specific strategies that multilingual learners need during instruction to help them acquire language more effectively while learning content. These strategies do not need to be elaborate or time-consuming to implement. Educators who embed these strategies in their instruction to serve and support their multilingual learners academically make a greater impact on their success. This week our tip for teaching multilingual learners is focused on engaging students in speaking opportunities to share their opinion. Read the Essential Question from My Perspectives to the students. Have them form an opinion and encourage them to justify their response with reasons and examples. Students should focus on using complete sentences and descriptive language. Have students turn to a partner and share their opinions with them. Give each of them time to listen to one another and then respond. This activity can be done with any other questions, stories, or pictures ML students will encounter throughout the week.

Sentence stems can be used to help your multilingual students effectively communicate their ideas:

• I believe… because…
• I think …. because….
• My personal choice would be… because…

Responding to a Partner Sentence Stems:

• I like how you said…and/but…
• You said.. and I agree/disagree because…
• I also thought of…

This strategy can be used with your whole class and during small group instruction. Giving your multilingual students opportunities to speak and share their opinions is a critical part of their language development.

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