In this episode, we zoom in on how to best support multilingual learners (MLLs) in K–5 literacy instruction — without lowering rigor or watering down content. Our guest, Rebecca Miller, English Learner Systems Coach at Muskegon Area ISD, helps us explore how intentional planning, language supports, and structured interaction unlock success for ALL students.
Literacy Essentials – Best practices in literacy instruction
EL Education Curriculum (K–5):
https://curriculum.eleducation.org
EL Education — K–5 Literacy Resources
https://eleducation.org/resources
EL Education & MLL Supports
https://eleducation.org/resources?query=multilingual
Structured Academic Talk
https://eleducation.org/resources?query=discussion
Michigan Department of Education – EL Services
https://www.michigan.gov/mde/services/special-education/english-learners
SIOP: 8 Components for Teachers
Interactions are key. Research shows that the more students are interacting with their peers within these structured conversations, the more they are going to excel academically. There's multiple studies that show this
content is accessible for all of our learners. Absolutely, we're not watering it down. We're not, you know, skipping parts of it. Nope, we're making it equitable for everyone and keeping rigor.
Welcome back to fuel up a place for conversations with and for those using el education as a resource to support k5 literacy learning, we are so excited to have you with us for this week's episode. Today we zoom in on the topic of multilingual learners. We hope today's talk serves as a pit stop, a chance to swing by for some fresh energy, insights, encouragement and celebration as we work together to do what's best for our learners, this is a chance to fuel up. So wherever this finds you today, we hope you are able to pull over, take a breath and crank it up and in that spirit, here we go.
We are back and ready for another great talk today, and one that I think our listeners will learn a lot from. It's a conversation that for some might be new. We are zooming in on how to best support the literacy instruction of our multilingual learners while talking about languages. Katie, did you study any second languages through high school or any other part of your schooling?
Well, let's just say I'm not multilingual. Okay, no, in high school, I took one year of French. Oh, yes, me too.
Did you we should do the podcast in French? Absolutely.
That could be, that could be fun. So, yeah, French, I'm wishing I took Spanish, okay, but I didn't. I did not.
Yeah, I think I did two years of French. And probably what I have to show for it is I think I could go through the alphabet and maybe do one of the questions, but that's as much as I can remember. Can you do you remember the alphabet?
I do not. I think I can maybe count to three.
I think that's right for all our listeners out there who speak French fluently, they're probably like, that is not
correct, but we gave it a try for us. It sounded, sounded good.
Yes, yes. We will encourage each other and say, good job. Here we go. Well, in that spirit of language, as we are talking about multilingual learners. And you know, Katie, you and I heard some interesting facts about multilingual learners and what that looks like. And I wonder, as we start this conversation today, if we get grounded by simply taking a minute to look at how our multilingual learners are represented in Michigan. So with that, let's take a minute to get grounded.
Yes, so Michigan's multilingual learning population is actually on the rise, and currently it is exceeding 104,000 students. And what that looks like that is just about the same amount of third graders in the state. So that's a lot, yeah. And then if we get a little bit closer to home in Muskegon, it is 633
students, k 12.
And in Muskegon, those 633 students speak 30 different languages.
That is crazy. I don't even know if I could list 30 languages.
No, I was thinking about that. I maybe three or four. Yeah.
So in our state, the amount of multilingual learners currently is about the size of the number of third graders we have. And in our county, that's represented by a little over 600 and if you happen to be one of those listeners who has, you know, a multilingual learner in your classroom, you're probably identifying with that. And if you have never had one of those learners in your room, don't be surprised if you do in the future. So we hope this conversation is relevant to all of us. So now that we've taken a minute to get grounded, we are so excited to invite our guests to the table. Katie and I recently had the opportunity to learn from this guest about a month ago, and we both turned to each other and said, We need to get this person at the table and get their expertise on. Fuel Up. Welcome. Rebecca Miller to the table. What's up? Rebecca, Hey, Rebecca is the English learner systems coach at the Muskegon area. ISD Welcome to fuel up.
Hey. Thank you guys so much for having me so excited to be here.
Well, we are excited to have you here too, and we always like to get warmed up and start with some fun questions. Katie, I'm tossing it over to you.
Well, welcome. Rebecca, hey. So the first question, what is your go to snack or drink to fuel you up and get you moving in the morning?
Well, my go to drink is definitely coffee. Yes, very strong coffee for a snack I generally love to have. I have these little peanut butter protein balls that I make and that I love, and they are just, they set my day off, you know, straight with my protein and I have my coffee. So between those two, get fueled up and ready, ready to go each morning. I mean,
homemade snacks, right?
I'm like something that's homemade, no, and peanut butter, yeah, and protein, tasty.
We are connecting with Rebecca, like we are putting in an order for these homemade protein happy to do it that sounds happy to do it good. All right, so we put in our order for to try some of these homemade snacks, and we are ready to just put some energy in the space. And so Rebecca, what song would you crank up to the max to fuel you up and launch your day?
So definitely, the dog days are over by Florence and the Machine, absolutely a soul lifting and spirit lifting song, and that gets you dancing and singing at the top of your lungs and just motivated and ready to get out there do your best greet the day.
Yeah, I really like that song. And right now I'm thinking of the Dog Day is a winner, right? I'm ready for those to be over. Great song today.
Any song you can crank up and sing to, like, sing your heart out. That is a good one. And so I'm gonna have to add that to my personal playlist. I don't, I don't listen to a lot of that's Florence in the machines, right?
Lawrence in the machine. Absolutely. I gotta watch to check that one out. And you got to listen to it really
loud, really loud, like experience.
And that's why we say, what would you crank Exactly? This is one. You have to crank it out to get the full effects. Yep, hey, for all our listeners, if you haven't listened to the dog days this summer by Florence and the machines, consider by Rebecca's recommendation to add that to your playlist and crank it up. Well, with that, we are ready to dive into our topic for today. I think a good place to start is simply by defining the word multilingual learner. There are different words to represent that and so to toss it to you, Rebecca, talk for a minute about when we say the words multilingual learner. What does that mean?
Yeah, so multilingual learners are students who are coming into our school systems with a primary language spoken either by themselves or spoken in the home that is other than English. So they are not coming from a background where English was the primary language they were exposed to from birth up to whatever age they currently are coming in this school system as So, yeah, so those are what we call our multilingual learners. You may have heard the term like English learners in the past, and we still use that term for certain scenarios. We're just sort of transitioning to the term multilingual learner, especially when referring to students, because it's a more asset based term. And so we really are wanting to highlight that these students come with they come with a lot to give us and to show us, and they come in with a lot that we can build on when we when we looked to support them.
So if we were to think of a specific example, if a student, let's just say, a fourth grader, was in our school, in our classroom, that English is the primary language in that classroom that's used by the teacher. Yeah, and this fourth grader their home life, let's say they lived with a parent and a grandparent, but then when they go home, Spanish is spoken primarily at home. Yeah, that student would be considered a multilingual learner,
absolutely, absolutely because they are using or being exposed to more than one language, a language other than English. Okay, yeah, they are not constantly exposed at home to the English language and the English language structure and everything that comes along with it, and the syntax and all those things that we teach. So there's going to be that gap right in compared to their native language English speakers. There's going to be a bit of a gap there that we have to think about and address in the classroom.
Yeah, most of. Our learners speak English in the classroom, and they go home and they speak English at home, so they get that anything that maybe hip was taught in the classroom, they get that repetition at home just by being surrounded by other people who are using that language. But for our multilingual learners, you may not get that opportunity Exactly.
And I'll just say really quickly, there's two different types of language that our multilingual learners acquire. There is the, what we call the basic interpersonal communication skills, and that's the social language. And they are going to pick that up within one to two years, because they are constantly immersed in it. So that's like, you know, your language at school, on the playground, you know, out of the classroom and the cafeteria, between halls, they're constantly exposed to that, maybe through media. The the second one, which is our academic language, they are not exposed to at the same level. And so it takes them more than more like five to seven years to acquire because they're not hearing that at home, or they're not exposed to it in the same way that maybe our native English
speakers are. So really thinking about that academic language, and it takes five to seven years to be proficient in that. Yes. So what do our multilingual learners need?
So what they need are opportunities to build language through content. I mean, that is the key piece we want. Them building language through content. They need equitable access to the core curriculum and through scaffolds, right scaffolds for language and scaffolds for content, and they need that to be planned intentionally, because it helps to ensure that they can engage in all activities. And when we are intentionally planning and being intentional with our supports and interactions in the classroom, we are making sure that we are building academic language proficiency for these students. And I would say that multilingual learners, this is essential for them, but I do feel like all of our students are academic language learners. You know, no student comes into our public school system with the understanding of how to communicate using Academic terminology and academic vocabulary. So all students are academic language learners, but our multilingual learners really need that intentional scaffolded support.
So these supports being intentional in planning are critical for our multilingual learners, but really good for all of our learners coming into our rooms.
It makes me think of some learning that Katie and I did with you around multilingual learners, and that learning really focused on an article that was put out by SIOP, and we'll talk about what SIOP is in just a minute. But in that article, it referenced a number of different strategies and routines that and routines that we as educators can put into place to support some of those learners as they are part of tier one. And I wonder if the rest of the time today, we just talk about some of these strategies. Can you kick us off and just talk, you know, give us a short summary of what since we're going to be talking about the SIOP article and and we'll link that in the show notes today. Can you just, can you take a minute and talk about what SIOP is, and then we'll get into some of the strategies that were referenced in that article?
Yeah, for sure. So psyop stands for another educational acronym, but it stands for sheltered instructional Observation Protocol. Okay? And it is basically it stemmed out of an observation protocol that was created when observing sheltered instruction classrooms sheltered meaning these were classrooms that were specifically created for language learners, multilingual learners, and so they created this framework of best practices to support building language in these multilingual learners. Well, as it became more popular, it was determined that this actually is just a phenomenal framework for instruction in all classrooms. It really helped to support student achievement. But again, I'll go back to it's just a research based approach to lesson planning and instruction designed to make grade level content accessible to multilingual learners while benefiting all students. So that's basically what psyop is.
What I really like about that is content is accessible for all of our learners. Absolutely, we're not watering it down. We're not, you know, skipping parts of it. Nope, we're making it equitable for everyone,
and keeping rigor
and and psyop has eight components of it, so it's, it is really structured and very clear and kind of those eight components really. Lay out a strong path of how to implement this and what that looks like. So yes, agree it that's one of the best things about SIOP. It maintains rigor, right? We're not lowering the rigor or scaffolding to bring that rigor to make it accessible,
yeah, so good if we won't go through you talked about the eight components and SIOP, we could spend hours talking about all eight of those. So we're just going to kind of weave in and out to certain pieces today, and then, as you are listening at home or at school, if you want to take a deeper dive again, that that article will be linked, and you can follow up and reread some of the things we talked about, but also deepen your learning and hear about some of the things we don't talk about. So, all right, as we think about those components, what might be one Rebecca that we could just have a conversation around, like, is there one that we could start with that you're like, Man, this is a really good one. This to put right at the front for us to consider as we're using el education as a resource and providing scaffolds for all kids to be part of the work. When we think about multilingual learners, what is one of those strategies that we should start to consider?
I really I felt so hard because they are all really important, but I do feel like the lesson planning component is really important, and here's why, because we talk a lot about intentionality. So when we know we are wanting to build language, academic language, in our students, and we know we want to make sure that we are creating equitable access to content and to tier one, we really need to be intentional about how we want to do that. I think learning targets are phenomenal, which I think a lot of people already have in place, also thinking about language objectives. So if we know we want students building academic language, what is that going to sound like? If I want them in conversation. What does that sound like? What might that look like if I'm going to have them writing right what type of academic language am I wanting to elevate in them? So I feel like that's one big piece, is just really focusing on academic and functional language that students should be using when having discourse and just making sure those conversations are really structured. So I think planning that out is really key.
Can you speak into that and just dive deeper? So you talked about providing some structures for conversations and also providing be intentional about some of the vocabulary where you want them to use. Yeah, what is a what is the tool to do that like we can plan that, but our Can you think of a practical tool that helps to structure conversations and also helps to helps us, as leaders of learning, be intentional about the vocab we want kids to use?
Yeah, absolutely. So definitely identifying the vocabulary that is key to what you're teaching, and then making sure that it is taught explicitly and with supports. So you want your vocabulary taught explicitly, you want to provide supports with that visual supports, possibly depending on the needs of the students in your class, but lifting their first language, which we call l1 by maybe taking the vocabulary word and finding the cognate in l1 maybe depending on age appropriate level, having short definitions written and having those accessible, so creating those supports and then anchoring them in the classroom in some way. So this could be through a word wall, and it's visual at all times that students can refer back to it. It could even be anchored there, as well as in their own personal notebooks. You can anchor it in their notebooks. So lots of opportunities to anchor vocabulary support interactive word walls are a phenomenal way to do that, and that just means that you are not you are introducing the vocabulary and posting it, but you're also constantly referring back to it. And this is key, because students need 12 to 15 opportunities to intentionally practice vocabulary for it to become part of their active vernacular, not they're passive. So if we want students really owning and using vocabulary words correctly in context, we have to make sure that we are offering those opportunities to interact with structured academic conversations and apply that vocabulary word walls. Interactive word walls are excellent ways to do that.
So I just feel like that's El, right, and that ties so nicely to the episode we did earlier with Lisa. With Lisa, it was episode four. Like everything you just said, Rebecca is already built into our El. There's vocabulary words we are encouraging. And you know, the use of them through that interactive word wall,
absolutely, yeah, you said a couple things too. I mean, it's not just that the vocabulary is there. It's how you use it. Absolutely, you know, we can introduce vocabulary, but never post it. And maybe that's good, but not what it could be, right? So, you know, you named having the word, having it visual, posting it, considering have an icon with it. If needed a small definition, I feel like we need to just step to the side for a minute, because you said a word cognate. Yes, somebody out there might be wondering, what
like, give us a 10 second cognate is
so like, let's say we're introducing a word similar. Let's say we're talking right. We're going to talk about comparing and contrasting and contrasting and similar is a word we want to talk about. The cognate in Spanish is similar, so you would just post that underneath. So it's the word that means the same thing in a different in the other language. The good thing about Spanish specifically is a lot of those cognates are very similar, but you can post them in in any language.
So the the move of having your vocabulary word posted, but if you do have a student who speaks Spanish to add up there, whether you're handwriting it or just putting it on a sticky something that feels manageable to you, you know, put that cognate or the word that means the same thing in that home language for allowing that kid to have a better connection to I'm probably speaking this word at home, like we said earlier, and this is the what it means in English in my classroom. And so helping kids to make that connection is a gift to them, absolutely.
And may I just add, it actually values that student, because you are showcasing their native language, and I guarantee you the other students are going to be so excited to be able to like your native English speakers, to be able to learn what that word means in another language, right? So you're in, you're valuing your multilingual learner's language, to see that it and then, especially if you're intentional with, Hey, this is what this means in, you know, Spanish, and our friends over here language, like, let's say it both ways. You know what I mean. And that brings that values and brings them in, you know, in closer into the classroom community.
So well it allows them to teach, yes, so we're teaching you, but now you get to teach exactly. And what a small shift. We're already doing this vocabulary work intentionally. We're already posting it. So what a small shift to use their language as well? Yeah, absolutely.
And highlighting the interactive part, which is what we really focused on in that conversation with Lisa. You know, have that wall up there, but don't just let it be pretty wallpaper. Interact with it, pull it off and use it as a teaching tool, but also allowing kids to take it and bring it back to them to support their writing. So, oh, man, it was so fun to hear that in the SIOP article, and hear you talk about that and know that the tools are there in the resource that we use in our classrooms to make some of that happen. Yeah, absolutely.
So we talked about learning targets and that intentional planning and vocabulary making that interactive. What is another strategy to use for our multilingual learners?
Something we call comprehensible input, is phenomenal, and it's just making sure that we are delivering our content in a way that students are able to access. This could be visuals, which we talked about with vocabulary, gestures, modeling Think alouds, modeling the language you want your students to use. And again, referring to those anchors of support that I was talking about with vocabulary and like constantly touching those to teach, maybe slowing your rate of speech, if need, be just making sure that we are delivering content in a way that is accessible to those students.
Somebody go nuggets in there like I feel like we need to go back and dig through some of those. You said touch to teach. Tell us about that.
Yeah, so again, back to those anchors of support, having that learning visual and language visible and always going back to it and just reinforcing it. So whether even when you're, let's say you're reading anything that you have posted a learning target, or a sentence from a book that you want to dive deeper into touching to teach right touching, as you're reading that and talking about it. You're doing one to one correspondence. You're doing directionality. You're doing all these different things. You're exposing high frequency words, if you're touching to teach your anchors of support with vocabulary. You're constantly refocusing that right, refocusing what you're saying the word, and you refocus. Focusing what it connects to. So yeah, and just orally modeling what you want this your students to say or sound like or speak like, is so powerful.
So those anchors of support in El those would be all those anchor charts. Yep, right, built in. You're doing anchor charts a lot. So again, it goes back to what you were speaking about earlier. That intentionality, yes, so we're intentionally using those using that strategy of touch to
teach Yes, absolutely. And again, on those anchor charts, depending on you know what content you're delivering, having meaningful images up there to connect right to it, if we know we're doing story elements, having, you know, visuals in our graphic organizer for characters, for setting right and these visuals and just constantly going back to that,
yeah, and you know, you can't touch to teach if you are sitting at your desk correct. I think about times back in my career, I was sitting at my desk doing some learning on a document camera for 20 minutes. And I will throw myself under the bus like I would do things differently now, but you know, to get up and actually part of that touching to teach, like you said, draws attention to things Absolutely. This is where, you know, we don't even have to say, look here, just the actual motion of touching something draws our attention that way. And for our multilingual learners who may need extra support, connecting what I'm saying to the word that represents that I'm able to show that one to one correspondence. Yep. You also said, before we move on this modeling by using think aloud strategies, and let's not assume we know what that is like. What is a thing for a teacher to use a think aloud strategy or just a think aloud? What is that?
So let's say you are focusing on your learning objective is to let's just say you're wanting to make inferences using text evidence to support your thinking. So you as a teacher, are modeling what that sounds like. If you're making an inference, you are modeling because you've intentionally planned your language sentence frames or structures, which we can maybe talk a little bit deeper in later of what you want those conversations to look like. So you're modeling that think aloud. You're thinking, Hmm, I'm inferring blank because the text says blank. I know when blank, this is how someone's feeling. So that is where my inference is coming from. That's not perfect, but you get my idea. You're modeling that thinking. You're modeling the explicit language of, how do I explain my thinking around, let's say, an inference. What does that look like? Text, evidence. How do I reference that? And you can do that with with anything you can. You could do that across content areas, modeling that
so good. It's like allowing our students to take a peek inside of our brain. Yeah, and how it works, yes. And you know, making inferences is a great one. Another word that we see a lot in El module is the funding the gist. And that shows up. And, you know, they hear that language always. We're gonna find the gist of this. And, you know, to model say, okay, hold on. We're gonna find the gist. And as we do this together, here's what I'm gonna read this, and then I'm gonna let you hear how I'm thinking about finding the gist and how I look for evidence, and I just model that. We model how we read fluently by reading out loud. Why not model how we're thinking out loud? And that's such a gift for our multilingual learners.
And you mentioned sentence stems, what a great strategy that you're you can model using them through those Think alouds, but then also adding that first scaffold, not only for our multilingual learners, but for all of our students.
Yes, I really that comes down to the that's a big part of the interactions piece with students, and that's another super powerful component of SIOP is interactions. Students should be talking all the time in your classroom, but they shouldn't be speaking around academic speaking, academic conversations with structured opportunities to do so. You know, research shows that the more students are interacting with their peers within these structured conversations, the more they are going to excel academically. There's multiple studies that show this. So interactions are key, but the interactions need to be intentional and structured with the. Structured academic language. So that's where language frames, I call them, come in. And language frames can be sentence starters. They could be sentence frames. They can be paragraph frames. It just depends on what your focus and goal is. So they are some of the, I feel, most powerful things you can do two fold, you're increasing that academic vocabulary, right? In this that academic language, but secondly, they lift cognitive load. So we know we want our students speaking using complete sentences, right and using complex language. We we know this it is sometimes hard for them to form that on their own. When we give them structured frames within which to do that, we're we're modeling and exposing them to that language, but we're giving them a frame to lift the cognitive load so they don't have to worry so much about, how am I going to start this sentence? How am I going to frame this? And they can then focus more on how am I going to accurately explain my thinking using maybe my vocabulary words? Because my teacher wants me to use my vocabulary words when I'm explaining that, right? So that's a huge piece. It makes me
think about our conversation with Jamie in student talk, and some of the sentence stems or student protocols that she had out to guide that conversation and how you said that. Like having a sentence stem lifts their cognitive load, yep. And it's like, where do we want you to spend most of your thinking energy? And it's not on how to start the sentence. It's in the it's in the content and maybe some of the vocabulary. So we're going to lift some of that for you, and here's how you're going to start it, and then you are able to have conversation around the content and the vocab and El, you know, Katie, you did such a good job earlier, connecting it to what the systems and the routines there are in El education. And there's so much of that student talk where they're guided, and often they do give you some of the prompts, and if they don't like take some of that intentional planning to pull one out, and it could be one you've used before that they're familiar with, but that's going to be a gift to all of our kids, especially our multilingual learners.
Yeah, another piece of that is we've talked about this is students write like they speak. So if we want to build better writers, we have to build proficient speakers as well. So we need to align that meaning. If I know this is the language I want them speaking, I want to give them opportunity then to write that right. I align it all and just make sure that we're giving them multiple opportunities, interactions, to speak using the structures, and then always bring in that written piece as well. So we can start developing the expressive language, the spoken expressive language and the written
expressive so good. Actually, in a couple of weeks from now, we're going to be having a new episode about the read, think, talk, write cycle, and that fits so well into that. And notice, read, think, talk and write, and the write comes after the talk. You have the chance to rehearse what you're going to end up writing, and you just name that so beautifully. We write the way we speak, we write the way we talk. And so we need to develop that oral language, and if we want them to write in complete sentences, then we should be giving them sentence frames to model what speaking in complete sentences looks like, absolutely
and you mentioned that kids need to be constantly exposed in using, not just exposed, but using this academic language, and so it reminds me of in El, there's so much of those protocols, but that peer to peer so has got me thinking that peer to peer before they write, oh, critical and that oral that's orally rehearse that and being intentional on who you pair up,
absolutely, yeah, intentionality is is key in all things, but yeah, yeah, absolutely, those interactions are just key. One of my favorite strategies that we talk about in SIOP, and I use my own teaching, is a 10 two. It's a chunking. Basically, we should be speaking for no more than 10 minutes and delivering content before we're then switching it to our students and giving them two to whatever, many minutes to have conversations about structured conversations about what we we just spoke about. And then maybe we come back. But we call it the 10 two. That way we are not as the teacher monopolizing right the time we want the students talking more than we are. We're giving some content, or we're giving something now, here's your structured conversation around that, and then we can come back
and continue some we've said this before. Sometimes the module lessons. Or long. Yeah, they can. We feel the rush to get through it all. I totally get it. And if we send talk at the kids for 60 minutes, that is not good practice either. And that framework of tend to is such a good reminder, even if it's not in your printed in the script, talking for 10 minutes and it's easy to do it. You look up, you're like, oh my goodness, that was 10 minutes already. Please pause and give them the chance to turn and talk. And not just for attention and engagement, but also, you know, when they have the chance to talk, it is going to improve their writing. So and you know what the time to isn't that the what? Sometimes the things we cut out, we're like, we're just, we wanted to get the right, so we're just gonna cut off the talking. Just go right to writing and, oh man, we are just limiting the quality of what that writing can be if we don't get them the chance to orally, orally rehearse it and provide them with, you know, some sentence structures, or language structures, sentence stems to support some of that.
It just has me thinking too, as an adult, and we, you know, as teachers, you go to professional development, think how you would feel, or you might feel this way. Yeah, when your presenter is talking at you for 60 minutes, and you don't have a chance to digest or do that peer to peer reflection, so you don't like it doesn't feel good to you, and I understand and get the time, but really, that tendon too is a really great practice.
It is, and we've
talked about so many gold nuggets today, and we're getting close to wrapping it up, and I'm just thinking about our conversation around just the interaction with learning targets and highlighting vocab with that interactive vocabulary wall and think aloud strategies and talking before we write, because we write the way we speak. I mean, so much good stuff. And if you were engaged by any of those and you want to go deeper, remember that SIOP article is linked right in the show notes. And you can read more about that and more, because there were so many of those different highlighted practices that we didn't get to today. And Rebecca, we just wish we could keep you for, you know, a couple more hours and go deeper. So absolutely, we do want to toss it back to you for a minute. It's time for we always end with small steps. And so as you think about our listeners, some who may be jumping into El education for the first time, and others who have been using this resource for years, if you could invite them to be mindful of one thing when working with multilingual learners, what small step would you invite them to consider?
I want to kind of go back to how you guys have connected this to things that are already embedded in El so there's so much that good that's already in there. So these strategies really just enhance what's already so good in the classrooms. I would say the one small step is just building those opportunities for interaction, structured interactions, the more interactions our students have, the more they're going to benefit. And I would just say yes, those are essential for multilingual learners, but they are beneficial for all yes, and just to remember that all students are academic language learners.
So good,
so good. I learned a lot today,
and as we close up this episode, we hope you got some fuel in the tank and lead with some fresh energy for the weeks ahead. And we're going to close things off today with high fives and hitchhikers. Here's the cool thing, we have the power to re energize and refuel those around us. So find a colleague. It could be the person next door. It could be the person across the hall. Maybe it's in another grid. Find that colleague and give them a high five. Tell them you got this. Remind them you're a rock star and pick them up as a hitchhiker, invite them to join the conversation and take a seat with us at the table. All the best to you and see you next time on fuel level.