The start of a new school year marks an excellent time to determine priorities and set goals that encourage and support the success of our ELs. One topic to consider as you begin the 2019-2020 school year might be EL family engagement. In this blog post, I will discuss why EL…

Engaging English Learners (ELs) in Academic Conversations Imagine this scene… your students are in small groups using images from a story that you recently read to discuss the story’s themes. As you kneel down to listen in on one group’s conversation, you overhear one of your quieter English learners say…

The holiday season is a great time to reflect on what your school is doing to support and value linguistically and culturally diverse students and their families. In their article entitled Culturally Responsive Instruction for Holiday and Religious Celebrations, Cynthia Lundgren and Giselle Lundy-Ponce provide general recommendations for culturally responsive instruction as…

Note: This post first appeared on Education.com June 4, 2018. That piece is titled Teaching Academic Vocabulary to English Learners: A Q&A with Sydney Snyder. It’s a common scenario when teaching English learners (ELs): The textbook or unit plan comes with a lengthy list of key vocabulary. Should all of…

Have you asked yourself any of the following questions lately: Do you think there might be DACA recipients, DREAMers, or other undocumented students at your school? Are you afraid to ask? Do you want to show your support but don’t know what to do? Are you uncertain about recent policy…