The English Language Arts Classroom as a Multilingual Literacy Community.

LANGUAGE arts; LITERACY; COMMUNITIES; MIDDLE schools

Literacy educators have long understood the importance of designing multicultural instruction for students. However, in an educational context that is both increasingly multilingual, literacy educators are not realizing that multiculturalism isn't enough. This article focuses on practitioner friendly recommendations for understanding linguistic diversity in the middle grades, designing physical spaces that support multilingual literacy communities, and designing affective spaces that support multilingual literacy communities. The recommendations in this article rely on data from a qualitative multiple case study to describe the approaches that middle schools recognized as Texas Schools to Watch were used to meet the needs language and literacy needs of their specific English Learner (EL) populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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