Creating questions and scaffolding responses for multilingual learners: How can teachers encourage higher level thinking?

Multilingual learners (MLs) are required to comprehend content-area knowledge while also acquiring a second language. Through purposeful planning, teachers can implement an instructional routine that fosters student wait-time, higher levels of thinking, and increases MLs’ participation and engagement, and allows MLs to practice their newly acquired language. This paper outlines an instructional strategy that focuses on the creation of higher-level questions based on text and scaffolding MLs’ responses based on their language acquisition level.