Systematizing Speaking Growth for ALL Multilingual Learners

Walk into any middle or high school classroom and you’ll likely see students working. Maybe they’re annotating a text. Maybe they’re listening to a lecture or answering questions in a journal.

But what you won’t often see—especially from multilingual learners—is speaking.

Not casual speaking.

Academic speaking.

The kind that builds confidence, builds vocabulary, and builds the bridge between language and content mastery.

And here’s the real problem: We don’t have a system for building it.

Why this matters for multilingual learners:

In most schools, speaking progress among multilingual learners is either invisible or anecdotal. A teacher might notice a student “speaking more this semester,” but there’s rarely a shared structure to track that growth—or help the student see it for themselves.

That lack of system means two things:

1. Teachers are left reinventing scaffolds and trackers from scratch

2. Students—especially multilingual learners—don’t always know what’s next for them

A Simple System that Scales

That’s why we created the Level-Specific Speaking Checklists:Student-facing, language-leveled trackers that let multilingual learners grow their academic speaking in real time.

Each half-sheet tracker includes:

• Clear, observable “can-do” speaking goals

• Academic Tier 2 vocabulary (with space for translation)

• Discipline-specific terms

• Thoughtful academic questions to master

• Study habits aligned with speaking growth

• A visual 1–5 rating scale to show skill development over time

Teachers no longer need to guess what comes next.Students can see where they are—and where they’re going.

And most importantly?Everyone’s using the same language to measure progress.

Build Systems, Not Silos

Multilingual learners don’t just need more support.They need predictable, visible systems that put their language growth at the center of instruction—across all classrooms, not just ESL.

This resource gives you one. Here is how you can use it.

First, download the document. What you will see is a set fo WIDA-aligned trackers, from 1-5.

Leveled Checklists.pdf

Download PDF • 210KB

Cut each paper down the middle, hot dog style. We decided to make this tree and student friendly. You will be able to hole punch these for students to put in the fronts of thier school binders without obstructing thier view of the rest of their classes.

During periodic binder checks, make sure students are checking off the different words, skills, and habits they are acquiring.

After you are finished let me know how you did it! We love to hear how our resources are making your life easier and your students school time more valuable.

Let’s systematize what we say we care about—so that every student can speak, grow, and thrive.