Start the year strong by learning how to pronounce students' names correctly. Encourage and provide opportunities for other staff and colleagues to learn correct pronunciation, too. Check out these resources curated by South Carolina ML educators. Advocating for multilingual learners and their families starts here! 

Navigating the start of a school year as a MLP teacher can be complicated and often overwhelming. Here's a general, South-Carolina-focused yet non-district-specific checklist to help get you started. Want an expanded presentation? View one here: https://bit.ly/3rOgMss.

All ML educators in South Carolina should bookmark and reference the SCDE's Guiding Principles (currently 2022-2023 available): https://bit.ly/3OG8lZr.

We hope this resource makes your new school year a little less overwhelming!

*Follow all district and state procedures and guidelines.*

Setting goals with your students will yield dividends throughout the year. Use this goal-setting sheet with your students to talk about last year's data and where they would like to be by the end of the year. You can also use this form to ask about learning styles and preferences.

Directions for use:

1. Share your student's ACCESS Score Report and ask them to write the score in each domain in the 2023 Score column (whole numbers are fine).

2. Direct students to color or shade in the corresponding number of boxes for the score (if they got a 2 in Listening, they will color in the boxes under Level 1 and Level 2 in the Listening row).

3. When coloring or shading is complete, students will be able to identify their "glow" area (most successful domain(s)) and "grow" area (least successful domain(s)).

4. Students complete the rest of the form.

5. Make copies. Allow students to keep one, and share other copies with colleagues as appropriate.

Visit the School-Based Advocacy section of our website for student information sheets, monitoring forms, and requests for support. These tools can support collaboration among stakeholders at the school level.

SC ML Educator Leadership Team member Lisa Summey from Spartanburg Six recommends this resource from Teachers Pay Teachers. It can improve communication between ML specialists and content-area teachers by providing supporting information about WIDA proficiency levels. Check it out on Teachers Pay Teachers!