Best practices are intended to support multilingual learners (MLs) in all classes, no matter their proficiency level. These strategies are expected to be used by all teachers within lessons, assignments, and assessments to support MLs and all learners. Best practices are strategies that educators can quickly implement within daily instruction, activities, and classroom assessments.

Description

Activating prior knowledge includes building initial knowledge of a subject/content and eliciting from students what they already know.

Key point to remember:
Culture and language differences are assets rather than deficits.

Examples:

• Pretest with a partner to preview ideas
• Anticipation guides
• Word clouds to introduce key concepts
• Contextualize key concepts (e.g. videos, slideshows, and photographs, realia)
• Venn diagrams, KWL charts, and thinking maps to connect ideas

	Teacher	Student
	The teacher explicitly plans to do the following: include students’ cultures and experiences make connections to past learning asks, “Who remembers what we learned about..?”	The student may: share in English or home language  respond with key ideas/concepts

	Teacher	Student
	The teacher includes such techniques as chapter previews and anticipation guides using visuals to provide context using a KWL charts: “What do you already know about___?”	The student utilizes verbal and non-verbal responses to anticipation guides.  The student utilizes verbal or non-verbal responses to complete KWL.

Recommended Domain(s)	Recommended Level(s)
Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing	All levels