Reanna, Janet, and Jaimyka are early childhood educators who are recent graduates of the Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) Diploma program in Aurora College in the Northwest Territories of Canada. They used storytelling and related follow-up activities to teach their Indigenous language, Tlicho, in their early childhood field placements in…

As part of a large study aiming to understand how kindergarten children in Colombia used translanguaging during independent play, Paula (the teacher) along with Dr. Moses (lead researcher) co-designed a 6-week play-based intervention that included a variety of learning experiences such as partner reading, small-group reading, and supported play,…

The field of multilingual learner education has become increasingly complex, with longstanding efforts focused on promoting "access" to multilingual learners being criticized for failing to "transform" systems responsible for these students' marginalization. This essay brings clarity to the complex terrain of equity for…

This article shares a selected number of research-evidenced and field-tested playful oral language learning activities (POLLAs) for early childhood educators to engage English learners (ELs) and their peers in focused oral language practices. These activities are easy to infuse in existing curricula.

Equivalence is a concept that comes up across the entire K-12 grade span and in many different areas of mathematics. Students who are bureaucratically designated as "English Learners" can explore equivalence across their K-12 academic careers while developing language to connect ideas. Drawing on what is known generally from theory and…

On day one the author sets up the expectation that her kindergarten Spanish language immersion classroom will be a 100% target language environment. To accomplish this, the author implements several structures, routines, and expectations to maintain the immersion environment. Getting to know the students, modeling appropriate behavior, promoting…

In order to make assessments as widely accessible as possible, including to young learners from diverse backgrounds with a wide range of individual needs and characteristics, some developers of standardized tests have resorted to offering accessibility tools (e.g., magnifying/zoom) and accommodations (e.g., extended response time) to test takers.…

Multilingual learners (MLs), also referred to as English learners (ELs) in US K-12 public schools, and specifically newcomer MLs who have been in US schools for 2 years or less, are expected to learn the English language and reach grade level standards as their monolingual English-speaking peers. Mathematics education in the US has struggled over…

Mathematical modeling involves using mathematics to represent, analyze, and make predictions or decisions about real- world situations. Garfunkel and Montgomery (2016) elaborate on six components of the mathematical modeling process, including identifying the problem, making assumptions and identifying variables, doing the math, analyzing and…

Meeting the needs of English learners (ELs) effectively must be an individualized, purposeful, and data-driven process. Progress monitoring can help practitioners to target their EL students' most significant academic and linguistic needs and, subsequently, develop and deliver instructional programming that may help students develop to their…

With the explicit goal of today's school students being active citizens, critically engaged and democratically minded over the long course of their schooling, the authors of this article focus on the notions of "rhetoric" and, relatedly, "rhetorical agency." While these notions are increasingly understood in secondary school…

Phoneme discrimination is the ability to detect subtle similarities and differences between phonemes. Phoneme discrimination is a strong predictor of reading development and poor phoneme discrimination may predict reading disabilities (Lyytinen et al., 2004). The ability to discriminate phonemes may be an even more critical skill for Emergent…

Learn how to teach multilingual students effectively and equitably with this practical and accessible resource. The authors share real-world examples from the classrooms of ESOL teachers, unpack the teachers' thinking about their instruction, and identify six core practices that are foundational to teaching multilingual students: knowing your…

This book follows four emergent bilingual students in an English-medium pre-kindergarten in the US as they navigate the social and linguistic demands of school. It illustrates how students' differing classroom social positions shaped their participation in interaction and, in turn, their English language learning across a school year. With a…

This article discusses the role of vocabulary learning in supporting multilingual students' participation in disciplinary practices and discourses in K-12 content-area classrooms. First, the authors discuss the strengths and limitations of incidental and intentional vocabulary learning. They then propose a new approach to vocabulary instruction in…