Building a Language Toolkit for Teachers

Working with the WIDA Standards
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-032-77355-1
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 210 Seiten, Format (B × H): 178 mm x 254 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

This book is designed for pre-service and K-5 educators seeking to develop their knowledge of how language works. Grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics, it serves as a practical language toolkit, offering supportive task cycles with exercises that help teachers identify, analyze, and apply language features to support student learning.

This book is essential for teacher education students and teachers for grades K-5 who are seeking to develop their pedagogical language knowledge to support their multilingual students. Through accessible, targeted, task-based resources for pre-service teachers, this guide supports teachers to build their own pedagogical language knowledge (PLK) to apply a functional approach for disciplinary purposes of narrating, informing, explaining and arguing in elementary level instruction.

Although the book focuses on unpacking the WIDA English Language Development Standards, it is well suited to support teachers’ development of language in any context.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate, Professional Practice & Development, and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Malin, Olga

Humphrey, Sally

Westerlund, Ruslana

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Mehrsprachigkeit
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Schulen, Schulleitung Grundschulen, Hauptschulen
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Pädagogik Bildungssystem Curricula: Planung und Entwicklung
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Lehrerausbildung, Unterricht & Didaktik Methoden des Lehrens und Lernens

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction, 1. WIDA standards and the functional language approach, 2. Language for disciplinary learning in elementary years, 3. Organization of language, 4. Cohesion of language, 5. Density of language, 6. Grammatical complexity, 7. Precision of language

Über Autor(innen)

Dr. Sally Humphrey, a teacher educator and literacy researcher, has long collaborated with international scholars to research and apply knowledge of grammar and discourse in K-12 schools, pre-service, and professional learning contexts. Many of these studies have informed teaching resources, including reference and workbooks used in international professional learning contexts. Research-based publications that are most relevant to the content of this book are:

Humphrey, S. (2017). Academic literacies in the middle years: A framework for enhancing teacher knowledge and student achievement. Routledge.

Ruslana Westerlund is an educational consultant, teacher educator and researcher of disciplinary literacy through Systemic Functional Linguistics with 30 years of experience in the field of Multilingual learner education. Her recent Routledge publications are:

A guide to disciplinary literacy in the social studies classroom. Routledge.

de Oliveira, L. C., & Westerlund, R. (Eds.). (2022). Scaffolding for multilingual learners in elementary and secondary schools (1st ed.). Routledge.

Olga Malin is an English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Teacher in grades K-5 and an ESOL Endorsement Instructor in Columbia County, Georgia. She earned a master's degree in Foreign Languages and Linguistics at Chernivtsi National University in Ukraine, where she taught English and translation. Olga completed her Education Specialist Degree in Advanced Educational Studies with a Concentration in ESOL at Augusta University with the Dyslexia Endorsement.