Many students in the United States speak two or more languages. Welcoming the whole child including their linguistic, and cultural practices sends a powerful, message of inclusion to all students in the classroom. As we help students learn English we should aim to celebrate and extend their first language not replace it. Here are a few ways to support multilingual learners in your classroom.

Multilingual children are experts in their home language so provide space and time for them to use multiple languages to think and express themselves. Consider sometimes pairing students with a partner who speaks the same home language to deepen fluency and help them build connections between languages. In whole class settings, invite multilingual children to share the word for something in their home language, a pineapple, for example. A quick exercise that feels welcoming and grounds newly learned terms in existing knowledge.

New English learners are inundated by language and that can be tough to navigate. To encode new language more deeply, you can sing memorable songs together, pair words, with matching pictures, or objects, or ask the student to tell you a story, then enlist classmates to act it out. Little plays are a fun way to reinforce language skills, and kids’ ability to shape a good tale while giving the storyteller a moment to shine. Research shows that when kids are learning a new language acting out words and phrases nearly doubles their ability to recall the words months later.

To give language learners a variety of ways into the content, try an approach called layered questioning. Based on what you know about each of your students’ proficiency levels frame the same question in different ways. For some students, a simple question that only needs a gesture in response is best. The next level up might require a yes/no. As their proficiency grows you can try either or questions or expand to open ended questions which ask students to share more intricate thinking. This gives everyone a chance to contribute to the classroom community, no matter their stage of language development.

Offer a wide variety of books that represent students and their experiences. Kids are more likely to read understand and enjoy books that they find captivating, which includes some characters that look and think like them and speak their own language. So let them pick their reads across genres and topics and let them explore books in their native language. They’ll be more engaged and grow as readers.