Lessons · Teaching · supporting a multilingual learner
A learner who is learning the language as well as the subject
A multilingual learner is learning your subject and the language it is taught in at the same time, so the support is to keep the content at full difficulty and take the language load off the things around it.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
The commonest mistake is to hand over easier work, which is the one move that guarantees they stay behind. What is needed is the same idea with more ways into it: a picture, the key words in advance, a sentence frame, and time to say the answer out loud before writing it.
How to think about it
Separate the two demands. Name the idea and keep it exactly as hard as it was. Then name the language the task requires and support that: pre-teach five words, give a sentence starter, and let them rehearse the answer with one partner before anything is written down.
Worked example
Same objective, same difficultyThe content is not the thing to reduce.
Pre-teach 5 words, one picture eachBefore the lesson rather than during it.
Sentence frame: 'The soil moved because ...'Gives them the grammar so that the thinking can go in the gap.
Talk it with one partner for 60 s before writingRehearsed speech is what makes the writing possible.
Your turn
Write the line that says which of the two demands is reduced.
Keep the content; reduce the load.
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Reading quiet as not understanding. A silent period while somebody builds a new language is ordinary and is not a measurement of what they know about your subject.