Moving Beyond for Multilingual Learners: The Blog

 AHHH MY NEW BOOK IS OUT! It's wild to say that. I had to rewrite this post like 6 times because I kept crying. To be completely honest, I feel a little weird celebrating this right now - because of everything happening in the world and in our country, it's hard to feel excitement. AND ALSO, I do feel that this book is needed right now. It's a very funky Both/And situation for me.  While I was writing this book, I was experiencing a lot of doom & gloom. I was digging up Supreme Court cases and civil rights laws, and I was wondering which ones would still be in existence by the time the book was published. That's deeply unsettling.  Like my first book, this feels very personal to me. I feel super vulnerable wondering how it will be received.  When Paul Gorski (AHHHHH! PAUL GORSKI?!?) reached out to me on social media to chat, my imposter syndrome was right there with me. I convinced myself several times, "He must think I'm someone else. There's no way he...

 Need a more structured version of Think, Pair, Share for your students? Our multilingual learners need culturally-responsive, low-stakes opportunities for output.  3PS is a structure is best utilized for reflective questions, sharing our own thoughts/opinions on a topic, or discussing our own lived experiences. 3PS is a structure that includes ALL language domains in a short span of time: all students are listening, reading, speaking, and writing (and may also be viewing & representing, depending on what students do!).  Process: The first step here is to share the prompt (write it out and say it out loud) and then pause for 30-90 seconds. The think time/wait time is EMBEDDED into this structure. During this time, you can set a timer, stare at the ceiling, but don't allow students to raise their hands or write or speak- not quite yet. You might repeat a few words or phrases during this time.  Bonus: share a few different rewordings of your question, AND/OR offer ...