Instructional Strategies for Emergent Bilinguals in Exemplary Classrooms

This brief describes a study of the instruction of middle school teachers who worked with Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) and were nominated as “exemplary.” One important finding indicates that interactive supports appeared to be more crucial than pre-planned supportive structures in helping EBs carry out cognitively challenging tasks. Additionally, teachers who expressed the most confidence in their ability to provide high challenge/high support instruction attributed their success to positive experience in professional development that focused directly on reading instruction for EBs.