In this episode, Susan Lambert was joined by Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan to discuss the unique challenges and opportunities presented when teaching multilingual learners how to read. Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan is a bilingual speech language pathologist and a certified academic language therapist. She is also the director of Valley Speech Language and Learning Center in Brownsville, Texas. On the podcast, she and Susan talked about how teachers can make connections between students’ home languages and English in order to celebrate their language and give them new tools to better understand English. She stressed the importance of teachers educating themselves on their students’ home languages so they can spot orthographic and phonological similarities and differences, and highlighted the importance of educator collaboration to drive student success.

Show notes: 

Literacy Foundations for English Learners: A Comprehensive Guide to Evidence-Based Instruction by Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan

Presentation: “Making Connections for Structured Literacy Instruction Among English Learners”

Reading SOS special video series: Expert Answers to Family Questions About Reading

Online book study of Literacy Foundations for English Learners By Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan

Mylanguages.org

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Quotes:

“The more we’re able to read, the more we’re able to learn.“

          —Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan 

“Sometimes as teachers, we feel so overwhelmed with, Oh, I don't know that language. How in the world am I going to introduce a whole new thing? Instead we should be starting to understand connections.”

        —Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan