More than 5 million students in the United States are multilingual learners, bringing rich languages, experiences, and home cultures into classrooms nationwide. Many others speak distinct varieties of English, such as African American or Appalachian English. The ability to use more than one language is, in fact, a cognitive superpower. Research shows that multilingual individuals often excel as problem solvers and creative thinkers, with stronger working memory and greater cognitive flexibility. 

But how can we harness these superpowers in reading instruction? How does the research behind the “science of reading” apply to multilingual and multidialectal learners? Most importantly, what do leaders and educators need to know to support these students effectively?

Inside this Knowledge List, we’ve rounded up the resources that we use every day with leaders to help them understand the research about multilingual and multidialectal learners. These same readings informed our own evidence-based belief that for all children, regardless of their level of English proficiency and the English language dialects they are most familiar with, explicit phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension instruction builds language and literacy proficiency and, ultimately, access to text.