michelle brochu

Nell Panero and Joanna Yip skillfully present a set of high leverage strategies that improve critical thinking, vocabulary acquisition, oral language, close reading, and writing development. Since the writing is accessible, thorough and thoughtfully constructed, Sentence Strategies for Multilingual Learners, is a must have book for ALL teachers who want to improve students’ literacy skills. Ms. Panero and Ms. Yip make plain what each strategy is; they explain why each strategy is important; they describe when we might use each strategy and they walk us through how to use each strategy. Moreover, they demonstrate, through specific, pragmatic, content-rich examples, various ways a teacher might differentiate to ensure her/his/their students meet the content and linguistic demands of each task. Through these examples, we experience the power and see the potential that each of these strategies hold. In short, Ms. Panero and Ms. Yip bring us to the drinking water and show us how to drink from it. Clearly, the combinations are game-changing strategies for MLLs certainly, but they are impactful, timely, relevant and necessary for all learners. When almost 2/3 of students in the US read and write below grade-level standards, we must change WHAT we are doing. If we continue to do what we’ve always done, we will continue to get what we’ve always gotten; that’s how systems work. Therefore, we must introduce new conditions of learning, conditions that target, support, develop and expand oral and written language. When we lean into these well researched strategies and use the evidence of what students say, write and do to develop combinations’ tasks, our teaching becomes more intentional, more strategic, more supportive, more targeted, more thoughtful, and, in the end, more rigorous while student responses become more thoughtful, more complex, more nuanced, more skillful and more powerful. Undoubtedly, meeting students’ language needs is justice work; it is equity work; it is empowerment work. Before we empower the students with the fundamental skills of the English language however, we need to empower the teachers with the knowledge and skills to target, scaffold, cultivate, develop and assess these elemental skills. Sentence Strategies for Multilingual Learners does just that.