Establishing Intentional & Purposeful Language Acquisition Support For Multi-Language Learners

Blake Hammond • Cahn Fellow 2020

Every teacher is a language teacher! No matter the content, the skill of language aids in being able to access the content. At Marie L. Greenwood (ECE – 8) and in Denver Public Schools, we are committed to providing language support for all of our students in every content area. 66% of students at Marie L. Greenwood (MLG) are Multi-Language Learners.  Particular to our school and other schools in our district, we utilize the model of Transitional Native Language Instruction (TNLI), which has traditionally focused on our primary grade levels (ECE – 5) This model strives to support students’ native language while also supporting English acquisition. In an effort to further enrich our intentional and purposeful language support to all students ECE – 8, we focused our project on this very topic! Join us as we detail the in-depth journey that we took to restructure our instruction to meet the needs of all Multi-Language Learners! This journey included soliciting feedback from a variety of stakeholders, the collaborative creation of a plan to be strategic in our language of instruction, the monetary reallocation of resources to support the plan, and a detailed design of professional development to successfully implement our new language plan. We know that when we support every student in language acquisition, we unlock the key for students to access all content!