Academic Language in Diverse Classrooms: Definitions and Contexts
About this ebook
With the rigorous content of College and Career Readiness standards, academic language use has moved to the forefront of educational priorities. School leaders and teachers must ensure that academic language becomes the focus of new curricula, instruction, and assessment, with special attention to linguistically and culturally diverse students.
The author’s six-book series on academic language is already the definitive resource on the topic. This companion volume provides a concise, thorough overview of the key research concepts and effective practices that underlie the series. Including:
- Definitions and examples of the dimensions of academic language.
- A step-by-step template to incorporate academic language use into plans for student learning.
- Graphic models that illustrate the construct of academic language and its classroom application.
Language is the most fundamental building block of education. Be sure your school is as strong as it can be with this indispensable book.
"This book brings language learning in the classroom alive! Against a backdrop of new standards, the authors skillfully take the reader through detailed vignettes of classroom practice that support students’ development of academic language, while at the same time discussing why the practice is effective."
—Margaret Heritage, Assistant Director for Professional Development
National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST) at UCLA
About the author
Margo Gottlieb, Ph.D., is a staunch advocate for multilingual learners and their teachers. As co-founder and lead developer of WIDA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003, Margo has helped design and contributed to all the editions of WIDA’s English and Spanish language development standards frameworks and their derivative products. Being a bilingual teacher, facilitator, consultant, and mentor across K-20 settings, she has worked with universities, organizations, governments, states, school districts, networks, and schools in co-constructing linguistic and culturally sustainable curriculum and reconceptualizing classroom assessment policy and practice. Margo’s passion has always been assessment in its many forms, starting with her dissertation, a K-12 multilingual test in Spanish, Lao, and English that integrated content and language. Since then, she was appointed to national and state advisory boards, served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar, and was honored by the TESOL International Association in 2016 for her significant contribution to the field. In her travels, Margo has enjoyed keynoting and presenting across the United States and in 25 countries. Having authored, co-authored, or co-edited over 100 publications, including 20 books and guides, Margo′s 3rd edition of her best-selling book, Assessing Multilingual Learners: Bridges to Empowerment, is the latest addition to her Corwin compendium.
Gisela Ernst-Slavit, PhD, is a Professor in the College of Education at Washington State University Vancouver. She investigates language teacher education in culturally and linguistically diverse settings using ethnographic and sociolinguistic perspectives. In addition to other publications, she is co-author of Access to Academics: Planning Instruction for K-12 Classrooms with ELLs (Pearson, 2010), From Paper to Practice: Using the TESOL’s English Language Proficiency Standards in PreK-12 Classrooms (TESOL, 2009), and TESOL PreK-12 English Language Proficiency Standards (TESOL, 2006). Dr. Ernst-Slavit, a native from Peru, has given numerous presentations in the United States and Canada as well as in Japan, Pakistan, Peru, Spain, Thailand, and The Netherlands.
