I read a tremendous number of books, articles, and blogs on topics that cover math, science, STEM, and general content instruction, to name a few. Although many of these books are not specific to multilingual language learners (MLLs), I am always asking myself: “Can this be applicable to MLLs, and, if so, how would it look?”

Sometimes, I run across a book that makes me say to myself, “There it is! This can easily be applied to MLLs.” The most recent book I read like this is Peter Liljedahl’s Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K–12. In the book, Mr. Liljedahl thinks about tasks in terms of “not what a task is, but rather what it does. And what a task needs to do to get students to think.” All students can think, even those whose first language is not English. So for today’s blog, I am going to talk about the power of using tasks to help you plan lessons with the understanding that MLLs can think in STEM and other STEM content classes. Continue reading →