peers( Langeloo et al. 2019). As a case in point, only 10 percent of Maryland multilingual learners met the state’ s kindergarten readiness expectations in the fall of 2023( MSDE 2024).
We( the authors) are teacher educators who study literacy, multilingual learners, and early childhood education. Through our work with preschool educators and project-based curricula, we have seen that interactive read alouds can be powerful, accessible avenues for fostering multilingual learners’ oral language, vocabulary, background knowledge, print awareness, and reading comprehension( see“ An Integrated Approach to Children’ s Learning” on this page). We have also found that preschool educators often want more concrete guidance on supporting multilingual learners, particularly when they do not share the children’ s home languages.
In this article, we offer practical guidance for educators working with preschool-age multilingual learners, paying specific attention to educators who teach primarily in English and may not share children’ s home languages. We suggest strategies educators can use before, during, and after a read aloud to scaffold children’ s language, content learning, and early literacy development. Although some examples draw on Spanish- English connections, the principles apply across multilingual contexts.
Multilingual Learners and Early Literacy Development
While research shows that phonological awareness( the ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds in spoken language) and phonics( understanding the relationship between letters and the sounds they represent) are important components of early literacy instruction, young children also need rich opportunities to build oral language, vocabulary, background knowledge, comprehension, and
An Integrated Approach to Children’ s Learning
Children Discovering Their World curricula, developed by the Center for Early Childhood Education and Intervention at the University of Maryland, are projectbased early childhood curricula designed for preschool-age children. While the curricula were developed for all children, multilingual learners benefit from the curricula’ s interdisciplinary, project-based approach, which builds on children’ s prior knowledge and experiences through hands-on, shared explorations. Interactive read alouds are a central component across projects, and embedded multimodal supports, such as visual vocabulary cards with pictures and labels, help children develop language skills while engaging with rich, content-focused learning.
The curricula originally began in 61 classrooms and are currently implemented in approximately 300 preschool classrooms across Maryland. They were developed through collaboration among researchers, educators, and early childhood partners with funding from the Maryland State Department of Education. They are present in different settings, including Head Start programs, centerbased programs, and publicly funded pre-K classrooms. In their feedback, educators shared that the projects elicit children’ s active engagement with real-life issues and encourage children’ s creativity, problem solving, and individuality.
Fall 2026 Young Children 77