Valentina Gonzalez, the co-author of Reading & Writing with English Learners: A Framework for K-5, is a longtime educator who has served 20+ years in education in her own classroom, as a district facilitator for English learners, a professional development specialist for ELs, and as a consultant. Her work’s primary focus has been on literacy, culture, and language. Valentina delivers professional development and works with teachers of multilingual to support language acquisition and literacy instruction. 

Episode Notes:

-Background as an elementary classroom teacher as well as ESL educator. She also supported ESL Teachers at their campuses as well as she is a professional development specialist.

-Took a long time to learn what was best for the multilingual learners in the classroom.

-Her book is Reading & Writing with English Learners: A Framework for K-5: A Framework for K-5

-It is essential to write your core beliefs as an educator no matter what content or population that you serve. Doing this as a team is powerful. Utilize those in the daily planning and align everything to those core beliefs.

- Literacy in any language holds value and can be leveraged to support learning and acquiring English.

-Student choice in reading and writing is essential. When we have a choice we are more motivated. 

-We can be most effective when we start from the heart and build from there.Center ourselves around students and what they need first. The only way to avoid assumptions is by being super curious. 

-We need to talk less and listen more to our students and their families.

-Keep learning as much as you can about the kids, and center everything we do around those students. That is the secret sauce.

-Be a listener, get them talking!

-Mini-lessons are super effective with multilingual learners. It can increase the comprehensibility of the lesson by breaking it down into smaller chunks. We still need to have checkpoints to stop and check for understanding with our students.

- Picture Word Inductive Model - learning content while also embedding speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

-Stay tied to the curriculum but infuse language into the lesson as well. See and hear at the same time.

-Excellence for multilingual learners does not happen by accident; we design it! We have to!

-Focus on students; focus on the child! What are the kids doing? 

Connect with Valentina:

Twitter: @ValentinaESL

Website: www.ValentinaESL.com

www.ReadingwritingELs.com

New children's book coming soon!