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 If you are bringing in a consultant or speaker, planning ahead can make the day more
successful for the audience and everyone. In this document, I’m sharing from my experiences as both an organizer and a consultant/speaker who has visited schools and educational support centers across the nation.  By Valentina Gonzalez, 2024
Much like a first impression, the first few days of school lay the groundwork for the rest of the year. They help to create a foundation and atmosphere. Traditionally these days have been used to set up the “rules” and for compliance. But instead, I offer you a few more community and relational techniques to start the year with students. You can adjust these to meet your students’ age level, but mostly they can be accommodated to fit K-12. These were chosen because they keep a focus on multilingual learners’ needs by building community, encouraging interaction, lowering the affective filter, and they can be used later in the year for more academic lessons.  Download the PDF below.Language surrounds us in everyday life. The big and small day-to-day interactions with family members and caregivers can offer valuable and authentic opportunities for language development. Caregivers often ask how they can help support their child's language development at home.
 Accessing prior knowledge is an important element of instruction especially when serving multilingual learners. It doesn’t have to take long, but when implemented it can stimulate thinking and help new learning stick too.
ABC Brainstorming is one way to access prior knowledge, and it can also be used as a culminating activity. ABC Brainstorming can be done in small collaborative groups or it can be done individually. I have found it most effective when introduced first individually for a few minutes and then in small collaborative groups.  This is a monolingual brain. This is a brain on multiple languages. In a globalized society, it is a disadvantage to understand and speak a single language. Nations work together to solve problems as well as communicate and work alongside one another. Therefore, one who is able to speak and understand multiple languages has apparent advantages in communication over one who can not.
Let’s examine the brain, languages, and how this plays out in our classrooms.  Teachers of Multilingual Learners have unique roles, special jobs! They not the same as most of the other teachers in the building. Here are a few articles to help get the year started on the right foot.
4 Things You Can Take OFF of Your List Before School Starts 3 Common 1st Day of School Mistakes Things To Do with MLs During the 1st WEEK of School 5 Ways to Start Off Your Class Period with MLs The F-Word. Fidelity & Why it May Be a Fallacy for EL Instruction Buzzwords in education are like mosquitos. They are here for a while and during that time they become very annoying. Lately, many educators are hearing one certain F word frequently in regard to programs and curriculum.
FIDELITY  What is advocacy? Am I doing it?
Many educators find themselves asking these questions. Advocacy sometimes sounds big and scary and many educators think they can’t do it. But actually, advocacy is incorporated in daily actions sometimes big and other times small.  Multilingual learners (MLs) are amongst the fastest growing population in the United States. MLs come from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The assets they bring to classrooms are sometimes underrecognized leaving these students struggling linguistically and academically. Many teachers of MLs want to provide instruction that meets their needs but find themselves not knowing how to help and feeling overwhelmed.
This is where Universal Design for Learning (UDL) enters and has been known to support and benefit MLs. What is UDL?  Teachers of multilingual learners or English learners need many tools and supplies in their toolbox. And they may travel from class to class or even school to school. Here are a few of my own favorite classroom essentials.
 Here’s a look at the most popular places visitors stopped to read and interact on this website in 2022.
 I have fond memories of cuddling up next to my tata (Serbian for daddy) before bedtime and listening anxiously as he told stories he remembered or even ones he made up. As an immigrant family from the former Yugoslavia, we brought little with us when we came to America. Books were heavy and did not make the journey. Storytelling, however, was a cherished time in our home. My favorite story was Hansel and Gretel.
**a version of this blog post was first published on BookBuzz.  Multilingual learners count on us to provide high-quality, comprehensible, and culturally responsive instruction in each lesson in every classroom.
Here are 22 practical and efficient ways (in no particular order) we can support emergent bilinguals as they climb to become our future global leaders. *The terms multilingual, emergent bilingual, and English learner are used interchangeably in this article and also include the acronyms MLs, EBs, and ELs.  For several years I taught on a campus that had an ESL program. We had students from around the globe. Families literally sought out our school before signing a lease or purchasing a home because they wanted to be sure their kids would be zoned to our campus. Our program was well known for the success we had with multilingual children.
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