Writing with Multilingual Learners in the Elementary Grades

This two-day workshop focuses on writing instruction that supports the use of the Teaching and Learning Cycle as way to empower multilingual writers, not only to produce successful academic writing, but, more importantly, to communicate effectively for a variety of purposes and different audiences. We want students to know how to leverage writing as a powerful tool to understand the world, express themselves effectively, learn from one another, and argue for the things they believe in. This vision requires intentional, language-focused instruction and is strengthened when it occurs through authentic writing tasks in the content areas. In this interactive workshop we will explore a pedagogical approach that apprentices multilingual learners into writing in various academic genres. Specifically, we’ll look at examples of this in science and consider how this approach develops multilingual learners’ writing skills and their awareness of how language works in written form. This will allow them to become effective and informed writers not only in science but across content areas