Equitable Access for English Learners, Grades K-6: Strategies and Units for Differentiating Your Language Arts Curriculum

Plain and simple: until our English learners have equitable access to the curriculum, they'll continue to struggle with subject area content. And if you're relying on add-on's to fit in from your language arts basal or a supplementary program, Mary Soto, David Freeman, and Yvonne Freeman are here to equip you with much more effective, efficient, and engaging strategies for helping your English learners read and write at grade level.

One assurance right from the start: Mary, David, and Yvonne are not suggesting you reinvent your curriculum. Instead, Equitable Access for English Learners, Grades K-6, focuses on how to fortify foundational practices already in place. First, you'll learn more about the Equitable Access Approach, then it's time to dive into the book's four units of study. Drawing on each unit's many strategies, you'll discover how to apply them to any unit in your own language arts curriculum and start differentiating:

• How to draft and implement language objectives to help English learners meet academic content standards
• How to make instructional input comprehensible, including translanguaging strategies that draw on your students' first languages when you don't know how to speak them
• How to utilize the characteristics of text to support readers, along with a rubric for determining a text's cultural relevance
• How to build students' academic content knowledge and develop academic language proficiency

Each unit addresses a commonly taught topic in today's language arts programs and comes with ready-to-go review and preview activities, key strategies, grade-level adaptations, reflection exercises, and printable online resources. Taken as a whole, they constitute an all-new approach for providing that equitable and excellent access our English learners so rightfully deserve.

Mary Soto, an Assistant Professor in the Teacher Education Department at California State University East Bay, prepares teacher candidates and masters students to work with diverse learners. She is a co-author of ESL Teaching: Principles for Success (Heinemann, 2016) and has published articles on the topic of bilingual/ESL teaching. She presents at national and international conferences. Her research interests focus on best practices for long-term English Learners.

Dr. Yvonne Freeman and Dr. David Freeman are professors emeriti at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Both are interested in effective education for emergent bilinguals. They present regularly at international, national, and state conferences. They have worked extensively in schools in the U.S. They have also worked with educators in Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Lithuania, Mallorca, and Sweden.

The Freemans have authored books, articles and book chapters jointly and separately on the topics of second language teaching, biliteracy, bilingual education, linguistics, and second language acquisition. They are authors of Grammar and Syntax in Context published by Corwin. Their books, published by Heinemann, include Dual Language Essentials for Teachers and Administrators 2nd edition, ESL Teaching: Principles for Success 2^nd edition, Essential Linguistics: What Teachers Need to Know to Teach ESL, Reading, Spelling, and Grammar, 2nd edition, Between Worlds: Access to Second Language Acquisition, 3^rd edition, Academic Language for English Language Learners and Struggling Readers La enseñanza de la lectura y la escritura en español y en inglés en clases bilingües y de doble inmersión, 2^nd edition, Teaching Reading and Writing in Spanish and English in Bilingual and Dual Language Classrooms 2^nd edition, Closing the Achievement Gap: How to Reach Limited Formal Schooling and Long-Term English Learners, and Teaching Reading in Multilingual Classrooms.

In addition they have edited three books: Research on Preparing Inservice Teachers to Work Effectively with Emergent Bilinguals, Research On Preparing Preservice Teachers to Work Effectively with Emergent Bilinguals and Diverse Learners in the Mainstream Classroom: Strategies for Supporting All Students Across Content Areas.

Dr. Yvonne Freeman and Dr. David Freeman are professors emeriti at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Both are interested in effective education for emergent bilinguals. They present regularly at international, national, and state conferences. They have worked extensively in schools in the U.S. They have also worked with educators in Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Lithuania, Mallorca, and Sweden.

The Freemans have authored books, articles and book chapters jointly and separately on the topics of second language teaching, biliteracy, bilingual education, linguistics, and second language acquisition. They are authors of Grammar and Syntax in Context published by Corwin. Their books, published by Heinemann, include Dual Language Essentials for Teachers and Administrators 2nd edition, ESL Teaching: Principles for Success 2^nd edition, Essential Linguistics: What Teachers Need to Know to Teach ESL, Reading, Spelling, and Grammar, 2nd edition, Between Worlds: Access to Second Language Acquisition, 3^rd edition, Academic Language for English Language Learners and Struggling Readers La enseñanza de la lectura y la escritura en español y en inglés en clases bilingües y de doble inmersión, 2^nd edition, Teaching Reading and Writing in Spanish and English in Bilingual and Dual Language Classrooms 2^nd edition, Closing the Achievement Gap: How to Reach Limited Formal Schooling and Long-Term English Learners, and Teaching Reading in Multilingual Classrooms.

In addition they have edited three books: Research on Preparing Inservice Teachers to Work Effectively with Emergent Bilinguals, Research On Preparing Preservice Teachers to Work Effectively with Emergent Bilinguals and Diverse Learners in the Mainstream Classroom: Strategies for Supporting All Students Across Content Areas.