This session equips teachers with practical strategies to design and facilitate rich academic discourse that supports multilingual learners. Participants will learn how to scaffold talk routines and engage with language-focused moves that promote quality interactions, rigorous thinking, and equitable participation. Educators will leave with ready-to-use tools to elevate student voice in any content area.

In this course, participants will examine the OMME ESL Secondary Curriculum with a focus on the design and layout of the curriculum. Participants will engage with the unit maps and lesson plans for their own context. Emphasis will focus on the ways the curriculum intentionally braids together explicit language instruction alongside grade level content standards.

Participants will internalize lesson plans for a deeper understanding of competencies around Culturally Linguistically Sustaining Practices (CLSP), Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Specially Designed Instruction (SDI) and academic language development. Driven by student assets and strengths, teachers will explore ways to scaffold, modify, and differentiate the materials to ensure alignment with students' linguistic proficiency and goals. To ensure every ESL lesson is designed for student needs in a particular context, participants will learn and use intentional strategies to include all four language domains.

This course is for ESL teachers grades 6-12 that have worked with the ESL curriculum for at least 1-2 years.  Participants will explore how to adapt the curriculum for diverse learners, including students with disabilities, multilingual learners, and those needing advanced differentiation.  Participants will focus on a subset and student profiles, strengthening Tier 1 instruction using the following:  Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Practices (CLSP), Specially Designed Instruction, Academic Language, Curriculum Implementation.

Beginning Fall 2026, the Office of Multilingual and Multicultural Education (OMME) will launch a professional learning series designed specifically for educators in Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) programs across Boston Public Schools. This work builds on the district’s ongoing commitment to expanding high-quality bilingual programming and ensuring strong alignment between program design and instructional implementation. The series will focus on strengthening educators’ capacity to deliver rigorous, standards-aligned instruction in both program languages while maintaining fidelity to bilingual program models.

Grounded in research and best practices in bilingual education, this professional learning will center on language allocation, biliteracy development, and the intentional integration of content and language objectives. Educators will engage in learning experiences that support the development of academic language across both languages, with attention to culturally and linguistically sustaining practices. The series will also emphasize coherence across classrooms and schools, ensuring that bilingual programs maintain both program integrity and responsiveness to student needs. This work is further supported by district-developed guidance on the appropriate and strategic use of native language, which serves as a foundation for instructional decision-making across bilingual and multilingual settings (see Appropriate Use of Native Language Instruction One-Pager and Appropriate Use of Native Language Materials). 

Through this effort, OMME aims to strengthen the instructional core of DLBE programs and support educators in creating learning environments where multilingualism, biliteracy, and academic achievement are fully realized.
 

According to the National Center on Universal Design for Learning, at CAST, UDL is a set of guidelines for instructional design that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn. UDL provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone-not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs.

In alignment with best practices and grounded in research, the Office of Multilingual and Multicultural Education (OMME) is advancing Translanguaging Universal Design for Learning (TrUDL) as a core instructional framework across Boston Public Schools. TrUDL integrates translanguaging pedagogy with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to ensure that multilingual learners can access rigorous, grade-level content through the strategic use of their full linguistic repertoires (TrUDL Guidelines). This approach positions language not as a barrier, but as an asset that supports comprehension, engagement, and identity development. Grounded in empirical research, translanguaging practices have been shown to improve student participation, deepen understanding, and expand access across content areas (Translanguaging: An Empirical Overview). Through TrUDL, BPS is working to shift instructional design toward systems that proactively account for linguistic variability rather than requiring students to adapt to monolingual structures. This includes embedding language supports within Tier 1 instruction, strengthening alignment across general education, bilingual education, and special education, and ensuring that multilingual learners with disabilities have equitable access to both language and content.

The WIDA Consortium is made up of 42 states, territories and federal agencies dedicated to the research, design and implementation of a high-quality, culturally and linguistically appropriate system to support multilingual learners in K-12 contexts. This comprehensive system, based on research and educator feedback, is built on standards, assessments and professional learning.

Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has been a WIDA consortium member state since 2012. DESE has adopted WIDA’s English language development standards and assessments for English Language Learners. The annual assessment for English Language Learners is ACCESS 2.0 (Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State­ to ­State). 

• The WIDA 2020 StandardsFramework incorporates a set of WIDA Language Charts that describe the expectations educators have of ML students at four different grade level clusters and in five different content areas.
• The grade level clusters include PreK­ to K, 1 to ­2, 3 to ­5, 6 to ­8, and 9 to ­12. There are five content areas of the standards. The first is called social and instructional language (SI), which incorporates proficiencies needed to deal with the general language of the classroom and the school. The others are English language arts (ELA), math (MA), science (SC), and social studies (SS).
• For each grade level, then, the standards specify one or more proficiency level descriptors for each content area within each of the four language domains: Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing.
• The WIDA framework recognizes the continuum of language development within the four domains with six English language proficiency levels.
   

As part of the district’s initiative to use an Equitable Literacy framework that ensures all students have access to Tier 1, grade level curriculum, the Instruction Team launched the ESL Curriculum in 2023 as an integral part of OMME’S Strategic Education Plan. 

The developmental phase of this launch included some key phases:

1. A thorough analysis of district-approved Tier 1 Curriculum
2. A deep dive into the WIDA 2020 Standards Framework
3. Developing a shared understanding of ESL instruction across programs
4. Norming on a framework that follows a continuum of language acquisition from K2-12.

Instrumental to its success was the vetting process, which required ongoing collaboration with ESL teachers to pilot, write and provide feedback for implemented lesson plans. Thanks to this undertaking, OMME has a working tier 1 ESL curriculum across grade levels.

The curriculum breakdown by grade level is as follows:

• For grades K-2, the team provided explicit guidance for the BPS Focus Curriculum, which includes Text Talk Adaptations
• For grades 3-6*, the team adapted each module and unit for the Expeditionary Learning (EL) Program. The 6th grade EL aligned ESL modules were created to support Elementary school programming and are slowly being rolled out. 
• For secondary grades 6-12, the team created a Scope & Sequence that aligns with the Massachusetts Curriculum Standards Frameworks across contents and StudySync, taking into account the units and books that ESL teachers are widely using for each ELD level.

As part of the district’s commitment to ensuring equitable access to Tier 1, grade-level curriculum across bilingual education programs, the Office of Multilingual and Multicultural Education (OMME) has developed a systematic approach to the creation and transadaptation of curriculum materials in Languages Other Than English/Spanish (LOTE/S). This work ensures that students in bilingual programs have access to high-quality, standards-aligned materials in their partner language, particularly in contexts where such resources do not already exist.

The development of this work has included several key phases: 

1. Comprehensive curriculum analysis and gap identification
2. Expert-driven design and language-specific development
3. Translation and transadaptation guidance development 
4. Standards alignment and instructional coherence 
5. Iterative review and cross-functional vetting 

Instrumental to this work has been a cross-functional review and rigorous  vetting process, ensuring that all materials, whether newly developed, translated, or transadapted, meet district expectations for High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIM) and usability in bilingual classrooms. 

The curriculum development approach is guided by the following principles: 

• Based on sound educational theory
• Implemented with adequate resources and qualified personnel; and 
• Evaluated for effectiveness

In alignment with Castañeda v. Pickard, these principles ensure that bilingual programming is designed and implemented in a manner that supports both language development and access to rigorous academic content.

In the absence of existing high-quality materials in the partner language, OMME ensures that curriculum development efforts result in linguistically authentic, culturally responsive, and instructionally rigorous resources that uphold the integrity of bilingual education programs across the district.