Intentional Supports for Dual Language Learners
| Ecosystem Element 8

Session Description: This session will explore the Ecosystem Element 8, which focuses on intentional supports for DLL learners.  Dual Language Learners (DLLs) or emergent bilinguals, are children learning and developing in more than one language. This element is exclusively focused on the school/site’s systematic and integrated efforts to develop an equitable environment that support DLLs through practices that enhance their learning and build on their strengths, including their first language. Teachers are knowledgeable about dual language development and the supports they must put in place to ensure DLLs thrive. Of principal importance in these supports is the inclusion and promotion of their first language and the encouragement to families to talk, sing, and read with their children in their language.

Why is it important?
Dual language learners benefit from other educational best practices that are effective for monolingual children (those developing in only one language) but they need a little more. They benefit most when they are educated in bilingual environments or when their first language is included for instructional purposes. Research indicates that DLLs learn best when teachers make frequent cross-language connections, and are knowledgeable of where children are in the development of all their languages. Furthermore, bilingual development has multiple advantages – social, cognitive, academic, and economic – and is a desirable outcome for all children. When children’s first language and culture are incorporated in the classroom, their learning takes off