Educating English Learners: What Every Classroom Teacher Needs to Know

In Educating English Learners, Joyce W. Nutta and her colleagues offer practical tools for helping schools and teachers successfully integrate English learners into mainstream classrooms. Drawing on the One Plus model presented in their award-winning book, Preparing Every Teacher to Reach English Learners, the authors now turn their attention to the needs of K–12 teachers who typically have two or three English learners in their classrooms.

English learners are not a homogenous group, and the challenges they face vary tremendously. Nutta and her colleagues present protocols and case studies to help pre-service and in-service teachers understand the needs of English learners in their classrooms and differentiate instruction and assessment accordingly.

Woven throughout the book are the stories of Gero, Edith, Tasir, and Edgar, four case study students of different ages, backgrounds, and levels of English proficiency. The authors show how the protocols they provide can be applied to adapt sample lessons for students like these, across a range of grade levels, subject areas, and pedagogical approaches. Finally, the authors show how the system can be applied school-wide for a collaborative approach to meeting English learners’ needs.