MW Substack 028: Multilingual learners
Whether we describe them as multilingual Learners, English learners, ELLs, or with other acronyms, our students who are working to gain fluency in English face many challenges.
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►MULTILINGUAL LEARNERS
Valuing, respecting and supporting their journey.
Over the past decade – thanks to the encouragement and support of EL champion Larry Ferlazzo and the generous contributions of two brilliant advocates for multilingual students, Valentina Gonzalez and Tan K. Huynh – MiddleWeb has published a large collection of articles in support of the ML teaching community and the students they serve.
This special issue of MiddleWeb Substack includes a selection of Valentina and Tan's most popular MiddleWeb posts – plus several additional articles we believe readers will also find practical and inspiring. Enjoy!
✻ VALENTINA GONZALEZ ✻
Everywhere we look, people are discovering Valentina's amazing skill set: teacher, coach, thinker, writer, artist, presenter, brand-builder, and most of all, powerful advocate for multilingual learners. Here are some of her most-read articles at MiddleWeb.
New to Teaching and to Teaching MLs? Try This!
First and foremost, writes EL expert Valentina Gonzalez, new teachers need to view multilingualism as a student asset. Learn her five proven strategies to achieve teaching success with multilinguals, who need to be valued, respected and supported to master academic content.
18 Ways to Support Your English Learners
Your English learners need some extra scaffolds and supports to level the playing field. They are learning a new language while navigating content at the same time. EL specialist Valentina Gonzalez highlights 18 ways that you can help support them in their journey.
Interactive Word Walls Enliven Vocab Learning
To create classrooms where vocabulary learning thrives, Valentina Gonzalez recommends an interactive word wall – a large graphic organizer displaying critical vocabulary with related ideas and visuals added by students. Great across subjects, for English learners and everyone else!
EL Retention Myths and What to Do Instead
Talk of grade retention revs up each spring. But it’s seldom a good answer for English learners. EL expert Valentina Gonzalez shares research that debunks the idea that retention helps ELs and suggests ways to boost their academic progress all year long.
How We Can Fairly Assess English Learners
Teachers need to learn what our students know and understand, but assessment can be difficult if language is a barrier for English learners. EL specialist Valentina Gonzalez offers tips to recognize unconscious bias, support learning with formative assessment, and more.
✻ TAN K. HUYNH ✻
The vast archive of multilingual resources Tan Huynh has developed through his own writing and research is remarkable. His extensive website, combined with his long-running podcast series featuring interviews with scholars and practitioners, represents a passionate decade-long commitment to improving the quality of life of multilingual learners like himself. We're fortunate to host dozens of articles drawn from the work of this practicing international teacher. Here are several of the most popular.
Collaborative Instruction Energizes Co-Teaching
When co-teachers implement Honigsfeld and Dove’s collaborative instructional cycle – co-planning, co-assessing and co-reflecting – multilingual students and their fellow students benefit from the robust, dynamic instruction, writes language specialist Tan Huynh.
9 Damaging Myths about Dual Language Acquisition
Drawing on his podcast with Dr. Sonia Soltero, language specialist and co-teacher Tan Huynh explains 9 myths that often prevent language learners from receiving the most equitable, rigorous learning experiences and can sever connections to their communities and families.
5 Principles of Culturally Responsive Teaching
Culturally Responsive Teaching is not a fad. It’s not one more thing we have to do for multilinguals, writes Tan Huynh. It’s a way of designing instruction for ML/EL/ESL learners that’s grounded in the assets of students, their families, and their communities.
Translanguaging Lets MLs Use All Their Tools
English learners achieve more when we let them use all of their languages to understand and retain what they’re taught in subject-area classes. Teacher Tan Huynh shares Dr. Gini Rojas’s insights about the power of translanguaging and how mono-linguistic teachers can put it to use.
Unlock Academic Writing One Sentence at a Time
While many multilingual students gain social language in two years, abstract, highly structured academic language requires much more time. Tan Huynh advocates teaching MLs at the sentence level because it facilitates understanding of content and fosters academic writing skills.
The Input-Output Loop: It’s Chunking 2.0 for MLs
Traditional chunking alone won’t help multilingual learners with the deluge of new content they experience. Tan Huynh shares the Input-Output Loop, a strategy developed with his colleague Beth Skelton, to make chunking more effective by assuring immediate processing time and segmenting content into units students can internalize.
Regie Routman “believes that we are most fully ourselves when ‘teaching, learning, and living are interwoven and seamlessly integrated.’ To show us this full self, she shares stories that might help us navigate our own worlds.“ – Read Sarah Cooper’s review of The Heart-Centered Teacher.
✻ OUR OTHER ML CONTRIBUTORS ✻
Engaging MLs in Daily Academic Conversations
If we want multilinguals to develop their speaking skills while learning content (and we do!) then they need multiple opportunities to engage in academic conversation throughout the school day. ML/EL education leader Jenny Vo shares her favorite successful strategies.
Supporting MLs: It’s Not Just One More Thing
Most teachers are not multilingual learner specialists, writes NBCT and 2018 National Teacher of the Year Mandy Manning. But most ARE teaching MLs. Overcoming a language barrier may feel insurmountable, but it’s not. Manning shares three key strategies that help fully support MLs in general classrooms.
Fun Ways to Support Multilingual Learners
Bouncing off a family session of Scattergories gone wrong, Curtis Chandler considers how to tap into multilingual learners’ interest in games and competition – including challenging tasks – by offering opportunities to play with and practice new skills in collaborative settings.
Help Language Learners Lead Their Own Learning
When teaching ELLs using a culturally responsive-sustaining pedagogy, write Larry Ferlazzo and Katie Hull-Sypnieski, centering student voice is critical to creating the conditions for student success. The teacher asks for, listens to, and acts on student ideas and feedback.
Try Drama and Role Play with English Learners
Reader’s theatre helps EL students feel more confident “playing” with English and learning to use fixed expressions, intonation, and gesture, writes teacher-author Alice Savage. Explore her 10 ideas for extending the content or language of a script into engaging lessons.
►ELSEWHERE
The best ways to coach teachers in multilingual settings.
In her October 2024 article at Corwin Connect, Tips for Coaching Teachers with Multilingual Learners, Margarita Calderon shares fundamental insights from her 2025 book Coaching for Multilingual Excellence: Strategies for Vocabulary, Reading, and Writing Across the Disciplines. "Coaching works best," she writes, "when the whole school is prepared and fully informed about coaching and instruction that works in multilingual, multicultural schools."
►OUR BOOK REVIEW
Sentence Strategies for Multilingual Learners: Advancing Academic Literacy through Combinations. By Nell Scharff Panero and Joanna Yip
In “Sentence Strategies for Multilingual Learners” Panero and Yip offer a robust toolkit that empowers educators with effective strategies to support MLs as they navigate the intricacies of language and literacy acquisition through content, says ML educator Melinda Stewart. Read the complete review.
►NEXT TIME
Teacher motivation and resilience.
As March turns to April, exhausted teachers look for reasons to carry on in challenging times. MiddleWeb contributors have insights to share.