Welcome to the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast. Each week we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self-paced, and mastery-based learning to better serve their learners. In this episode, Toni Rose is joined by Rebecca Castellanos of the English Learners Success Forum to talk about strategies and approaches to working with multilingual learners and learners who speak different languages in the classroom.

Rebecca started her career as an upper elementary bilingual educator before she moved to an office position within Denver Public Schools to support bilingual programming and instruction. When COVID hit, she stayed home to help her own children learn remotely, be with her family, and think about the next steps and what she really wanted to do. Now as a consultant for the Forum, she has shifted her focus from bilingual learning to multilingual learning and creates systems, structures, and resources with partners in order to improve curriculum and instructional materials for multi-language learners.

What is the English Learners Success Forum?

The English Learners Success Forum is a nonprofit that focuses on increasing the supply of high-quality instructional materials for multilingual learners. Outcomes for these learners have not improved for over twenty years. English Learners Success Forum works to change that by:

• Partnering with content developers to improve their materials

• Reviewing the curriculum and offers areas to grow

• At times, helping with strategic planning and design work for multilingual learners

• Working alongside states and districts to support multilingual learners

How can you make your curriculum more accessible to English language learners?

Ensure students know their home languages and cultures are appreciated and supported. Educators can focus on both language and content in a lesson, but should work to make a lesson accessible.

Increasing accessibility for multilingual learners

• Use strong visuals. These are not just pictures (which can be distracting) but add to the lesson, are meaningful, and increase comprehension.

• Chunk content so learners can stop and process with a peer. These interactions can be in English or their home language.

• Have captions in different languages.

• Have learners record responses and conversations.

For expression, word walls, word banks, writing or speaking in another language, and sentence frames all increase accessibility to express learning. These accommodations are integrated into the instructional materials and are not an afterthought. educators can think about what language learners need to know to understand and what language will learners use to express their learning. Not only should social interaction be centered in the learning environment, but educators should also explicitly teach the skills needed to have a productive conversation and use these conversations to build knowledge. Multilingual learners can learn while they build language.

How can educators alleviate fear and anxiety for learners who do not speak their language?

Learners pick up a sense of belonging early on and educators can help foster this. Even if we cannot communicate effectively, educators can smile, use movement, and encourage them. educators can learn some basic words from learners as well.

Keep in mind: these learners come with knowledge and concepts in more than one language. Acknowledge and respect that!

How Can Educators Use the ELSF Resources?

• Use the strategies for analyzing content as a rubric for analyzing your own classroom content.

• Access the guidelines for Math, Science, and English Language Arts which show how a curriculum can best support English Language Learners.

• Review example lessons to see strategies in action for a lesson.

What actionable steps can educators take to help learners access the curriculum?

An easy, but important, strategy is to add in learner talk. This can be large, quick, planned out, or in the moment. Start small - for example, a turn-and-talk or give 1-2 low-lift prompts, word banks, questions, sentence-starters. Do not give too much at one time and make sure to model conversation.

In general, be okay with experimenting and trying new things. Do not be afraid of mistakes. Connect with the learners and do not be intimidated! Give yourself permission to start small and get better with time. Always remember: to have learners feel a sense of belonging and that their identity is valued. The educators and the learner can learn and grow together.

Discussion questions for PLC and PD: 

• Where do you fall in the MCP implementation process (a mentor, completed the course, working on the course, planning to take the course in the future, or just waiting)? What is preventing you from moving forward? 

• Could you foresee your school going school-wide with MCP? Why or why not? What positives would that lead to and what drawbacks would there be?

• Does your school use student-led conferences? What are your thoughts surrounding that concept? Would you be willing to try it or do you think it would work? Why or why not? 

• What supports does your school currently have towards using MCP? Which would you like to see in the future? Do you, personally, use them? Why not or how have they been helpful?

Our Host

Toni Rose taught MS English for 10 years and will forever identify as a teacher. Toni Rose strives to be the teacher that she never had growing up, so she focuses on anti-bias, anti-racist work and wants to create a brave space for everyone around her. As a queer Filipinx, she understands just how important it is to be represented, be valued, and belong. She especially loves being a thought partner for and celebrating teachers.

Our Guest: Rebecca Castellanos

Our Author: Larissa Fomuke

Larissa Fomuke received her masters from Rutgers University in education and taught Special Education middle school math for twelve years in New Jersey before heading out west to Park City Utah where she has taught the same grades in English for the past seven years. She started dabbling in self-paced learning last year with Canvas modules but has improved in the past few months with the help of the Modern Classroom Project.

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