Dr. Jana Echevarría is Professor Emerita at California State University, Long Beach, where she was selected as Outstanding Professor. She is co-creator of the SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) Model and a leading researcher in effective instruction for multilingual learners. Dr. Echevarría was inducted into the California Reading Hall of Fame in 2016 and has served as an expert on English learners for the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. She is also an author on a new research-aligned reading program, Emerge!, published by McGraw-Hill.

In our first episode, Dr. Jana Echevarría joins us to discuss effective instructional strategies for multilingual students who are learning to read. The conversation highlights the interdependence of language and literacy, the need for collaboration among educators, and the importance of building language, literacy, and knowledge in tandem.

Key Takeaways:

• Language is the engine of literacy. They develop together, not in isolation.
• All teachers are both language and literacy teachers. Collaboration is essential to meet students' needs.
• Effective literacy instruction for multilingual learners requires both code-based skills (decoding) and meaning-based skills (language comprehension) delivered with intentional scaffolds.
• Comprehensible input through visuals, gestures, and structured interaction accelerates both language development and meaning-making.

Timestamps:

(0:00 ) Welcome to Literacy Across Languages!

(09:29 ) Bridging the Science of Reading and the Science of Language Acquisition

(12:54 ) The Relationship Between Language and Literacy

(22:59 ) Comprehensible Input

(25:44 ) Leveraging the Home Language

(29:08 ) Code-Based vs. Meaning-Based Instruction

(38:45 ) Finding Common Ground

(44:31 ) Takeaways

Episode Resources:

1. Visit Dr. Echevarría's website for SIOP resources.
2. Download the SIOP Model Lesson Planning Framework Checklist.
3. Join The Reading League's Monthly EL/EB Meeting Zoom calls.

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Keywords: multilingual education, SIOP model, language literacy, comprehensible input, cross-linguistic resources, effective teaching strategies, science of reading, teacher collaboration, literacy instruction, bilingual education