The Science of Reading in Action: Five Evidence-Based Fundamentals

4. Support for All Learners

Today’s classrooms are diverse in every way—linguistically, culturally, and developmentally, with students of varying academic, cognitive, and social-emotional skill and need.

Yet educators must ensure that all students achieve grade-level expectations while simultaneously meeting each student where they are (Cabell, 2022). And all of this must occur in a supportive and inclusive classroom environment.

This is no easy task. To achieve it, the unique developmental, cultural, and linguistic needs of all learners must be kept at the center of literacy teaching and learning.

The range of developmental needs, especially for students traditionally underserved, is more extensive than ever because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

—U.S. Department of Education, 2021

Classroom

Applications

Engage students with resources that widen their perspectives and understanding of themselves and the world.

Build content-area concept knowledge and essential literacy skills.

Create in-school contexts for students to share their voices and visions through reading, writing, and speaking.

Choose texts that speak to students’ multiple identities, not their reading identities alone.

Scaffold ways for students to share their thoughts and respond to texts.

Academic knowledge and experiential knowledge and cultural knowledge—all of the things that we know, all of the experiences that we have—are all resources for literacy development.

Teachers must attend to the kinds of academic knowledge that they support in school but should also help students to bring their personal knowledge to their own literacy learning—to try to find ways to form those connections as they read, not only for the sake of engagement, but also for their cognitive benefits (Gina Cervetti, 2023).

We should get to know our students…. [and] think of [them] as full of rich, experiential, and cultural resources that they can bring to their own literacy learning.

—Gina Cervetti, Ph.D.,

University of Michigan, Marsal Family School of Education

There is a growing national need for English Language Arts instruction that incorporates English Language Development.

By 2025, 1 in 4 children in U.S. classrooms will be an English Learner. These students come from a variety of backgrounds, speaking upwards of 400+ languages. The majority will be U.S.-born (U.S. Department of Education).

Confronted with the need to learn language and content simultaneously, English Learners may struggle academically.

Students learn language through prolonged exposure that leverages culture and first-language knowledge and includes opportunities to negotiate content and ideas in the target language, with scaffolds and supports that foster learner agency.

Classroom

Applications

Engage students with resources that widen their perspectives and understanding of themselves and the world.

Build content-area concept knowledge and essential literacy skills.

Create in-school contexts for students to share their voices and visions through reading, writing, and speaking.

Choose texts that speak to students’ multiple identities, not their reading identities alone.

Scaffold ways for students to share their thoughts and respond to texts.

Common Misconceptions

Some assume that a gap in oral language background signifies that Multilingual Learners require an oversimplified approach to English Language Arts instruction. However, research shows that Multilingual Learners with developing levels of language proficiency can succeed academically with the right instructional resources—those explicitly designed to engage them in intellectually rich topics while meeting their linguistic needs.

There are multiple benefits to being multilingual, multiliterate, and multicultural in today’s global society.

Dual language mastery benefits memory, mental flexibility, and the ability to concentrate. It boosts creativity, confidence, and the ability to learn in all subjects, leading to higher academic achievement and greater career opportunities.

Knowing more than one language from birth, acquiring a new language through school, or learning languages later in life can provide tangible advantages in many areas. Multilingualism is an asset that can benefit English learners as well as native English speakers in a variety of ways.

—U.S. Department of Education, Office of English Language Acquisition

Set High Expectations but with Proper Scaffolds in Place

Supporting all our learners does not need to mean lowering expectations or even the complexity of text. Having the proper scaffolds and layers of instructional support in place can make all the difference.

Ways to support learners while maintaining high expectations:

Integrate scaffolds for English Learners into core lessons.
Ensure all students have opportunities to access complex text daily, using additional scaffolds as necessary.
Look for MTSS resources that align directly to your core instruction.