Pinecone Path is designed to support multilingual learners (MLs) by employing an asset-based approach that recognizes and leverages their linguistic and cultural strengths. The program integrates numerous explicit and implicit scaffolds throughout its design and lessons to help MLs successfully access the content, build language, and engage meaningfully in class discussions.
The supports for multilingual learners fall into three main categories: embedded lesson features, specific instructional practices, and program design elements.
1. Embedded Lesson Features
The manuals include point-of-use resources designed specifically for MLs:
- ML Notes (Margin Notes): These notes are located in the margins of the lessons and provide specific, point-of-use scaffolds for adjusting or enhancing instruction during the lesson. They include ideas for:
- Clarifying Vocabulary: Prompting the educator to define words or phrases that are not formally taught but may be unfamiliar to MLs.
- Discussing Cognates: Providing suggestions for discussing cognates (words in two languages that share the same root, meaning, and similar spellings, such as problem/problema). This strategy is explicitly encouraged for Spanish-speaking MLs to help them negotiate meaning and use their home language as a resource.
- Celebrating Multilingualism: Offering suggestions to encourage educators to consider students' backgrounds and recognize the assets they bring to learning. This might include asking students to share relevant topic-related vocabulary words in their home languages (while noting that students should not be required to be experts).
- Providing Additional Modeling or Practice: Encouraging the re-modeling of previously taught games, activities, or procedures.
- ML Support Feature: This planning feature appears in the Week Overview before introducing letter sounds in whole-class Morning Meeting and most small-group Letter Names and Letter Sounds (LNLS) lessons.
- Anticipating Challenges: It helps educators anticipate letter sounds that may be challenging for (or unfamiliar to) students depending on their language backgrounds.
- Pronunciation Support: It directs educators to the “ML Support for Letter Sounds” resource (found in the Planning Resources section of the Learning Portal). This resource offers ideas for pronunciation support and having students produce and experiment with the sounds. If needed, educators are advised to use articulatory gestures (movements of the mouth, tongue, lips, and vocal cords) to explain and model how to produce challenging sounds.
- ML Vocabulary: This feature identifies and defines additional words in a read-aloud that educators may want to address specifically with their MLs. These are words or phrases important for comprehension that MLs may not know. The definitions are written so they can replace the word or phrase in context during the reading, without lengthy discussion, to maintain the story's flow.
2. Specific Instructional Practices
The program incorporates practices that are proven to support English language development:
- Small-Group Oral Language Development Lessons (Optional): These lessons are specifically designed for students who need additional language support, particularly emergent multilingual learners. Taught once per week to identified small groups, they focus on teaching common vocabulary words used in everyday language, using new vocabulary in meaningful ways, and speaking in complete sentences. These lessons use Oral Language Development cards to provide visual support for word meanings.
- Encouraging Home Language Use: The lessons affirm and value students' cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Using their home language in the classroom helps students become more comfortable and has been shown to make acquiring a second language easier. The program encourages MLs to communicate their literacy knowledge verbally, and educators invite students to share words in their home languages.
- Cognate Awareness Mini-Lesson: For Spanish-speaking MLs, a mini-lesson entitled "Introduce Spanish Cognates" is available in the Instructional Support section of the Implementation Handbook. This lesson introduces developmentally appropriate cognates of familiar nouns and teaches students that knowing Spanish can help them learn and remember English words.
- Strive for 5 Conversations and Open-Ended Questions: MLs are encouraged to participate in Strive for 5 conversations with educators (turn-taking with five exchanges). When asking questions, educators can use closed-ended questions to foster low-pressure verbal participation for MLs in the earlier stages of second-language acquisition. They should also provide additional time for MLs to process language and information before responding.
- Promoting Nonverbal Responses: Students are encouraged to communicate their literacy knowledge nonverbally through movement, acting out, or drawing. Drawing, painting, dancing, and role-playing are effective ways for students to increase comprehension and convey understanding, referencing methods like Total Physical Response (TPR).
- Visual Supports and Predictable Routines: The lessons use visual aids (such as picture cards, enlarged texts, educator-made charts, and photos) to integrate aural explanations with visual representations. Predictable lesson patterns and routines also provide scaffolds that help students demonstrate competence.
- Strategic Partnering: While paired work is common, the program suggests strategic partnering for MLs. This might involve pairing an ML with a partner who is more proficient in English to accelerate English language development and increase confidence in discussions. Alternatively, there may be times when grouping students by home language is more strategic.
3. Program Design and Equity
The overall program structure supports MLs through foundational principles of equity and access:
- Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Instruction: The program is committed to educational equity, ensuring that every student receives what they need to develop to their full potential. Instruction uses rich, meaningful literature that features diverse characters and represents a variety of cultures and experiences, which helps MLs feel welcomed and represented. The physical environment should also include keywords, labels, and signs in students' home languages to honor and celebrate their multilingualism and cultures.
- UDL Alignment: The program aligns with the Guiding Principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), ensuring instruction is easy to understand and provides flexible options, supports, and challenges for all students, including MLs.
- SEEDS Framework: The SEEDS Qualities framework is used to guide adult-child interactions. The SEEDS Qualities Reflection Tool includes specific questions to help educators support MLs such as confirming awareness of their home languages, monitoring comprehension, and encouraging them to speak their home language.
- Family Communication: Take-Home Letters and Take It Home Practice Activities (available in English and Spanish) encourage two-way communication and help families practice skills like handwriting, letter names, and vocabulary at home.