Teachers of multilingual learners (MLLs) in the United States will be meeting new students from many countries this fall. Recently arrived students from Ukraine, Haiti, Russia, Afghanistan, and Central and South America, to name a few, will be welcomed to our schools by educators of MLLs. Literacy is a key component of how MLLs adapt to schools in the United States, and it is important for teachers to realize that not all newcomers come to us with the same background, especially when it comes to literacy.

Newcomers differ in their level of literacy and their comfort with reading and writing in both their home language and in English. In the United States, about two-thirds of MLLs come from nonliteracy-oriented homes (See Zacarian and Haynes’s book about beginning English learners). In this blog, we’ll look at literacy skills, which include oral reading fluency, reading comprehension, writing, spelling, and speaking. It is important for teachers of MLLs to visit or interview families so that they can discover what role literacy plays in the homes of their newcomers. The programs designed for MLLs from nonliteracy-oriented homes will need to be quite different from those for students from literacy-oriented homes. Continue reading →