Featured Speakers:
- Annette Gregg, Director, English Learner and Migrant Education at WestEd
- Amanda Nabors, Research Associate, English Learner and Migrant Education at WestEd
Host:
- Danny Torres, Associate Director of Events and Digital Media at WestEd
Danny Torres:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 12th session of our Leading Together series. In these 30-minute learning webinars, WestEd experts are sharing research and evidence-based practices that help bridge opportunity gaps, support positive outcomes for children and adults, and help build thriving communities. Today’s topic, Literacy Practices That Support Multilingual Student Success Across Content Areas. Our featured speakers today are Amanda Nabors, research associate for our literacy team at WestEd, and Annette Gregg, director of English learner and migrant education at WestEd. Thank you all very much for joining us, my name is Danny Torres, I’m associate director of events and digital media for WestEd, I’ll be your host.
Now, before we move into the contents of today’s webinar, I’d like to take a brief moment to introduce WestEd. As a non-partisan research, development, and service agency, WestEd works to promote excellence, improve learning, and increase opportunity for children, youth, and adults. Our staff partner with state, district, and school leaders, providing a broad range of tailored services, including research and evaluation, professional learning, technical assistance, and policy guidance. We work to generate knowledge and apply evidence and expertise to improve policies, systems, and practices. Now, I’d like to pass the mic over to Annette. Annette, take it away.
Annette Gregg:
Welcome, everyone, we’re so excited to have such a large group of you joining us today. As Danny shared, this is part of a WestEd Leading Together series. This is “Literacy Practices That Support “Multilingual Student Success,” So my name is Annette Gregg, I am the director of our English learner and migrant education services here at WestEd, a team that is home to quality teaching for English learners, I’ve been with the organization since 2011, and I come to you as a former bilingual teacher from Berkeley, California in the Bay Area. I’m here presenting today with my colleague Amanda Nabors, and I’ll let Amanda introduce herself, as well.
Amanda Nabors:
Hi, everyone, my name’s Amanda Nabors. I’m coming here from Brooklyn, New York. I’m a research associate here with our literacy team, and I’ve been at WestEd about nine years now.
Annette Gregg:
Thanks so much. So we know the reason we’re here together today, multilingualism is the norm, it’s no longer the exception across our country. I’ve seen in the chat, we’re joining from all over the United States as well as from outside the United States. Again, welcome to everyone. In the United States, nearly one in five students in public schools now speaks a language other than English at home, and we know that multilingual learners are also the fastest, one of the fastest-growing segments of the U.S. student population. So this student group is really capturing our attention and we know that they need our support.
And so, we’re happy you joined us today because the practices that support multilingual learners, we also know, and research has shown us, that they enhance instruction for all students, so that’s really where we wanna center our work, in thinking about what do we want for all of our learners? And the things that you see here on a screen, I think we could all nod if we were in a room together and could see each other, we want students to have a well-developed understanding of key ideas that they can use as they engage in critical thinking to generate new understanding and apply their knowledge and understandings to new and novel situations and experiences. That’s the powerful type of learning that we are really after.
So today, we’re gonna be focusing on these four things, just gaining some insights. Of course in 30 minutes we can’t go in-depth so deeply that we all become experts, but we’re hoping to bring you some research and some practical pieces that you can apply directly in your context regardless of your role. So we’re gonna look at how we foster opportunities for disciplinary discourse, encourage translanguaging for meaning-making, highlight key language functions, and how we can leverage high-quality instructional materials and asset-based practices to really promote disciplinary discourse and learning.
So as you can see here on the screen, we wanna foster opportunities for disciplinary discourse, and I have three images here. On the left, you might see an engineer looking at some different types of blueprints, we have a historian in the middle, and we have two scientists working on something on the right. And as educators, we inherently know that each subject has its own way of thinking and talking and reasoning through its subject matter. So whether it’s justifying claims in math, or whether it’s analyzing cause and effect in history, or describing different processes or making predictions in science, our students don’t just need the content, but they really need to learn the different ways of using language explicitly, and they need to be supported in ways to practice using those different types of language.
And we call this disciplinary literacy, which is helping students read, and write, and think like experts in each subject area. And what this means for teachers is that we have to be teaching our students these specific ways that people in different fields use language to build knowledge or solve problems, and really communicate their thinking. So this approach shifts a little bit because it recognizes that literacy isn’t just a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s going to have its nuances in different subject matters, and that students need a lot of opportunities to practice using the disciplinary language and thinking of that specific subject.
So in math, we might be helping students really understand how they justify their reasoning and explain their steps very clearly. In history, they’re specifically learning to analyze sources, primary sources, secondary sources, and explain cause and effect. And in science, students are learning, again, to predict or explain processes and to maybe write some certain types of informational reports. And we have to create these opportunities for students to speak and write and collaborate using the specific forms of language from that discipline.
Amanda Nabors:
So that makes a lot of sense in that, but I’m wondering, what can teachers do in the classroom to really build this disciplinary discourse for students?
Annette Gregg:
Great question, Amanda, because we know that discourse doesn’t just happen on its own, right? Just putting students in groups or pairs doesn’t foster interactions. We have to do more with our instructions. So some of the things that we can do in classrooms, as we’re planning and in the middle of instruction, is do some checks and balances. How are we fostering these opportunities? First of all, we can check, do we have abundant opportunities for students to actually engage with their peers in meaningful interactions. Not just one or two, but through the course of our period, or our subject, or our time with our students, how often are they having these opportunities to develop their language and deepen their understanding literally through their own talk, by questioning their ideas and hearing the thinking of others?
And when we design the tasks, the time used, abundant opportunities, we wanna make sure that we’re focused on providing open-ended questions and tasks. If our questions are asking students for a simplified or a one or two-word answer, a correct answer, we don’t get the types of discourse that we’re hoping for because we’re limiting their possibilities for actually responding. So we can check ourselves and make sure, are we structuring and designing our questions and our prompts in the right ways? But even with abundant opportunities and intentionally designed prompts, we tend to see that students who are the most comfortable talking tend to be the ones who keep talking.
So another critical question that we can ask ourselves is how are we using structured discussion routines and protocols to make sure that all students are actually participating in conversations and have an opportunity to contribute their ideas, regardless of their level of proficiency in English? By asking students, for example, to turn and talk to a partner is different than providing a student A and a student B, and structuring it in a way where student A has a response first and student B then has to respond to student A, and those types of discussion routines are what I’m talking about when I say how we can promote academic and disciplinary discourse.
And then, of course, for our multilingual learners, giving some linguistic supports, making sure that we have sentence stems, that we have language that students can grab onto, they can refer to as they’re exploring their conversation and developing their full knowledge of the content and the discipline. And so, when we do all of these four things well, we’re not only helping students learn, but we’re helping them participate really and authentically as mathematicians, or scientists, or historians. And we can do this in English, and we can do this leveraging students’ home languages as well. So next, let’s take a little look into what that looks like for translanguaging practices.
Amanda Nabors:
Thanks, Annette. So what is translanguaging? Really, it’s just a technical term for how multilingual students really speak and think. So rather than code-switching, where students are alternating between these separate language systems by context, so say they’re using their home language with friends, with family, but they’re using English during math class, et cetera, translanguaging involves students using what Garcia and Wei call a unified linguistic repertoire. So really, it’s allowing more fluidity. It involves letting multilingual students integrate all of their linguistic assets into one repertoire rather than language separation by context, which is how, you know, they tend to work naturally anyways.
You don’t think to yourself, “I’m going to be thinking in German, “and now, I’ll be switching,” you know, you’re using a mix of your assets all the time. And this is a real skill that multilingual learners can bring to the table when there’s room made for it. So embedding translanguaging opportunities into your classroom means that they can use all of their languages not just to access the content, but also to analyze and demonstrate understanding. So intentionally facilitating these opportunities for translanguaging not only promotes inclusion in the classroom for these learners, but it’s also linked to stronger disciplinary learning and language development in both English and home languages.
So while this is a natural practice, like I’m saying, it’s not an unstructured one, and there are ways to intentionally include these opportunities and practices in routine instruction.
Annette Gregg:
So Amanda, if someone does include these in their instruction, what would that look like?
Amanda Nabors:
So there are lots of different ways to do this and facilitate a culture of translanguaging in the classroom, even if you yourself are monolingual or you only have a couple of multilingual students. This doesn’t have to be a case where every student in the class or even most of them are speaking more than one language. So we can start with practices that really highlight the expertise that these students are bringing to the table and welcoming them in your classroom, specifically creating that physical space.
So regardless of the lesson you’re doing, can you ask them key terms in their home language? Can you collaborate with your kids and even their families to build a multilingual word wall? Or even with your classroom guidelines or transition words for those in kinda K-3, lower school, can you put those up in multiple languages and really create that welcoming physical space? And then, there’s also collaborative tasks that gives students the most lingual flexibility possible. So let’s say you’re in a science lab who’s studying ecosystems maybe, can you encourage students to compare and contrast a local ecosystem to one from one of their home countries and compare that vocabulary?
And we’ll talk about this a little bit more later, but there are also some great instructional materials available now to help embed this in. Some will be labeled books, word walls like we talked about. And another practice that Annette will highlight is being really intentional about making the structures and functions of language visible. So when we make that clear in one language, it really encourages students to think about and kinda develop that understanding structurally of their other languages, as well.
Annette Gregg:
Thanks, Amanda. So language is definitely at the heart of learning. We use it as a meaning-making tool, and that’s regardless of the subject. But for multilingual learners, we know it’s not enough just to hope that they’ll pick it up. We need to show them how language works and how English works in particular for our English learners. So this makes making language visible as something that is essential in every classroom. Teachers need to call out language that we use when we wanna explain an idea, for example. Or there’s a different set of language when we’re describing something.
We choose different words and structures when we’re making a persuasive argument, because all of these different reasons for using language require different language. And so, we can use tools like sentence starters and anchor charts, or thinking out loud while we read and write, to model how we use language to make sense of things or to make meaning. And when we do this just regularly as a part of our instructional practice, students start to see the patterns, and these patterns strengthen what we know as meta-linguistic awareness, or the ability to think and talk about how language works.
So with more meta-linguistic awareness, students become able to understand how to structure their thinking and their talking, and they begin to express their ideas more clearly. And it also helps them grow as readers and writers and speakers, not just in English, but across all of their languages. So here’s the thing, these strategies don’t just help English learners, they benefit every student. Whether, when we’re clear and intentional about the language we use, and why, we create more access, more confidence, and more success for all of our students in our classrooms. So making language visible isn’t just extra, it’s actually essential.
And Amanda, I think if you just click quickly, we’ve got just a little person here exemplifying this with two different thought bubbles. So on one side, they’re thinking, “What am I trying to do with my language? “Do I wanna explain something or describe some something, “or do I wanna persuade someone to do something?” And then, “What is the language “that I need to do that well?” And that’s what we want students to be able to understand when we talk about meta-linguistic awareness.
Amanda Nabors:
So Annette, how do teachers teach in ways, though, that really make that language visible in practice?
Annette Gregg:
Another great question, because without being able to understand how this might look in a classroom, it gets a little foggy for us. But what I wanna be clear about is that we’re not asking people to teach sentence diagramming or teach grammar rules out of context. Again, language is a meaning-making resource, and we want our multilingual learners to be able to draw on all of their linguistic assets to make sense of the world around them. So making language visible for students has to happen in the context of what they’re learning. So an example might be that when students are in a science class and they’re learning about how animals’ bodies help them survive, and in a particular lesson, students are looking at different pictures of animals and they’re starting off by describing what they see, what their body parts are.
So here, we have an elephant, and we have a bee, and we have a clownfish. And oftentimes, in this type of situation, we focus our teaching on providing a word bank for students to draw from when they’re talking and when they’re writing. So you can see on this word bank some of the common body-part language that might help students accurately describe what they see. And this is really helpful for students, especially when the lists are made collaboratively and they draw upon what students already know, again, both in English and in their home language But where the meta-linguistic awareness can really be built in and is really powerful is when we explicitly teach students about, in this case, the language of description.
When we describe things, we use specific language to tell us about something, and we usually and often use language of “is” and “are,” or “has,” or what something “can” do. These are typical ways in English that we describe things. And so, when we understand this and we can make it transparent to students, then we’re able to combine both pedagogical expertise and teacher knowledge, and we can put them together to make sense of what students are learning. So in this example, students can use the picture cards, use the body-parts language, but then they have some specific description language to tell us that the elephant… Elephants are big, or the bees have wings, or fish can swim.
Now, you could take any of those three different sentences and you could insert the other animals, and you could still use that language to help describe animals. So pointing out that this language of “is” and “are,” “has” and “can” is really critical to describe something gives students an overall powerful entry point to describe things in all subject areas and across content areas, so in science, ELA, math, art and more. And so, when we make language visible and how it works visible to students, we’re helping them unlock a code that really goes and cuts across all subject areas in all grade levels to come.
Amanda Nabors:
So next, we’re gonna talk a little bit about instructional materials and asset-based pedagogy. So what makes an instructional material high-quality in this context, in terms of fostering this disciplinary literacy in multilingual learners? And really, it’s kind of a trick question because there’s no one curricula or assessment that is the sort of go-to standard. If your district is using evidence-based materials, which is what we always recommend, you can likely make what you have in the subject area you’re in work for you here. So we know that students are the most engaged when they see themselves and their communities reflected and respected in the materials they’re being asked to engage with.
So using materials that do that alongside integrating these really intentional, kind of asset-based instructional practices in each unit of study really compound their usefulness. And so, the way we like to think about this is that you can start by just doing a little bit of assessing. “Are my materials reflective of the kids in my classroom?” You know, “Do I think they do a really good job “of demonstrating the norms of my discipline?” And if not, you know, kinda how can you supplement? Does your library have some multilingual books? Could you work with families to supplement some cultural language discussions? Next, it can be useful to just sort of ask ourselves, “What are the conventions of my discipline?”
It’s really easy, I think, when we live in these content areas to just take those key practices that we wanna make explicit for students, like Annette is talking about, they can sink into the backs of our brains because they’re so fundamental, we’re so used to them, they’re so part of the discipline, but when you’re teaching even multiple content areas, that gives you a real opportunity to engage your students in figuring out, like, how exactly does a scientist read differently from a historian? So doing just a little bit of inventory of our own practices and assignments, you know, we always wanna start from a pedagogical place of recognizing all of the wonderful assets that these students are bringing to the classroom.
So from there, Annette talked a little bit earlier about building in these kind of abundant opportunities for students to engage in translanguaging, so that’s where we get to the “do” part. Can you vary up your assignments and assessments to better make those opportunities? Are there places where you can build in, especially in formative work, when we’re really asking kids to do that brain work, places for multilingual expression?
Annette Gregg:
That’s really helpful, Amanda. I’m wondering if you can go a little more in-depth, though, about what pedagogical practices really encourage disciplinary literacy, specifically for multilingual learners.
Amanda Nabors:
Definitely, so I think the powerful way to think about this is in tweaking the everyday routines that you’re already doing rather than overhauling. So if you’re in a geography unit, like this map up here, can students compare maps from different map-makers, and you kind of drive that discussion, create that disciplinary discourse about different lingual and cultural perspectives on that map? Could your whole group reading be, like, a bilingual book where the mono and multilingual students take turns asking or answering questions? We have the little microphone there, if your class does affirmations for those of you in the younger grades, could caregivers report them in their home language and you play them in both English and the student’s home language?
You know, we know that teachers have a thousand things to think about, you have standards to meet, you have assessments to give. Incorporating these practices doesn’t have to be this huge overhaul of what you’re doing. You know, these little inventories and assessments and additions, and especially just cultivating that classroom attitude of inclusion and engaging a student’s entire linguistic repertoire, we think, really goes a long way.
Annette Gregg:
Thanks, Amanda, and I see one question in the chat too, and if I’m understanding it correctly, it references a question about, you know, the time it would take to translate so many, into so many languages. And I hope that at this point in the webinar, that you’re seeing that by leveraging translanguaging, by letting students use and access their own languages, that can minimize the need that you have to feel the pressure to translate everything. We can help students by creating spaces where they can use their home languages in ways that we don’t have to be the ones that understand their home languages the way that they do, but creating those spaces is our opportunity and responsibility.
And when we think about just some closing, high-level takeaway thoughts here is… again, in a 30-minute webinar, we can’t cover everything, but we hope that we’ve shared with you some of the rationale and some of the research behind knowing that practices that support multilingual student success such as those that we’ve talked about here today, building meta-linguistic awareness, for example, that supports all student success in all of the disciplines. And these are practices that we really wanna think about how they cut across subject areas so they’re reinforced and self-reinforced for students over time. And that teachers are powerful. You have incredible opportunities every day in your classrooms to create abundant opportunities for disciplinary discourse.
And when we do that, we are letting students really go deeper into what we shared in the beginning was, we believe, our goal for education, is for students to really be able to understand and own the knowledge so that they can apply it to their own new and novel experiences and situations. So sometimes, again, that pressure of getting through the content, we need to be able to remind ourselves we can balance that with the opportunities for students to go deeper and have deep conversations as they refine their understanding.
And creating these spaces for this type of collaboration and using all of the resources that our multilingual learners bring with them, and being really intentional about modeling, these are the ways that we really bring students into what it is to be literate in the disciplines, to understand what’s different about a mathematician, or how do they have to explain their thinking, justify their reasoning, and this is what we wanna do for all of our students in all content areas.
So we have the opportunity to make a space in our classrooms to do these things, to support teachers if you’re in an administrative or a coaching role, to be able to really leverage all of these and create wonderful, rich learning opportunities for all students with a focus on multilingual learners. And with that, I’m gonna turn it back over to Danny.
Danny Torres:
Thank you, Annette and Amanda, for a great session today, and thank you to all our participants for joining us, we really appreciate you being here. Please feel free to reach out to Amanda and Annette via email if you have any questions about the work we discussed today, you can reach Amanda at [email protected] and you can reach Annette at [email protected]. If you’d like to get some more insights about our literacy work, you can read some great articles on the topic in our Insights & Impact blog at wested.org/blog.
We have articles focusing on Supporting Multilingual Learners in Disciplinary Literacy, Why Disciplinary Literacy Belongs in the Elementary Classroom, What Principals Can Do to Cultivate a School Climate in Which Disciplinary Literacy Thrives, Beyond the Science of Reading: Why Disciplinary Literacy Matters for College and Workforce Readiness, and Reading, Writing, and Communicating in STEMM: Preparing Students for the Future. You can also follow our literacy at WestEd LinkedIn Showcase at linkedin.com, just search for literacy at WestEd and that page will pop up right away.
For more information about our supports and professional learning opportunities on the topic of literacy and quality teaching for English learners, you can visit our Reading Apprenticeship website at readingapprenticeship.org. You can also visit our Writing Apprenticeship website at wested.org/support/writing-apprenticeship. And you can learn more about our Quality Teaching for English Learners initiative at qtel.wested.org, that’s q-t-e-l.wested.org. For information about additional professional learning opportunities and research on the topic of literacy, visit our literacy page at wested.org/focus-area/literacy, or you can scan the QR code displayed on the screen here.
And there’s still time to register for our upcoming Leading Together webinars. We’re covering a range of topics including literacy, early math, assessment and more. During these webinars, we’re sharing insights and evidence-based practices to improve teaching, leading and learning. For more information about our Leading Together webinar series, visit us online at wested.org/leading-together-2025. And finally, you can sign up for WestEd’s email newsletter to receive updates. Subscribe online at wested.org/subscribe, or you can scan the QR code displayed here on the screen. You can also follow us on LinkedIn and Bluesky. With that, thank you very much for joining us, we’ll see you next time.