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This last section puts forward questions and suggests activities that, we hope, move the ideas in each chapter into action. It aims to provide inspiration in the work of teachers and school leaders to take the DARE and begin discussions with others at school.

As educators begin to think about academic language use, here are some ideas and questions to ponder or discuss with others.

1 Gather demographic data on your students, including school history, academic achievement, and other languages spoken at home. After reviewing the data, exchange information with colleagues in answering the following questions:What assets and challenges do our students bring with them?What linguistic and cultural resources do they possess?How can we connect the language required of college and career readiness standards to students’ experiences with language?

2 How is academic language use present throughout our school—in hallways, classrooms, and common areas? How can we make it more visible? How can we elicit students to help us?

3 What is your own experience in learning academic language in English or an additional language? What were some of your challenges, and how did you overcome them? What were some advantages of language learning, and how did you leverage them to make yourself understood by others?

4 What are some existing structures or resources that can support a focus on academic language use at your school? How can you make academic language learning a whole-school effort? What might you need? How can you get it?

Our goal with this book is to begin conversations in spaces where they may not exist and to move the conversation forward for educators who may already be thinking about academic language use and its impact on academic achievement. With this in mind, we touch on some important themes throughout the book to help you, the reader, make connections to other initiatives in your schools or to identify points of entry for discussions around language. These themes include

 21st century schools and classrooms

 Linguistic and cultural sustainability

 Increased attention and acknowledgment of students and families as decision makers in education

In order to make academic language use and the themes of our book more tangible and powerful, we have included a range of materials, tools, and resources in each chapter. Each resource within a chapter is partially completed to suggest how you might wish to approach it; there is a corresponding blank template of each resource at the close of each chapter for your personal use. We thank our friends at BrainPOP® (www.brainpop.com) for sharing their wealth of resources to help us bring key uses of academic language to life.

Resource P.1 Reasons for Promoting Academic Conversations in School

Individually or in teacher teams, brainstorm how you might strategically increase the quantity and quality of academic conversations in your classroom. You are welcome to borrow ideas from Figure P.3 and suggest others on your own. Refer to this resource throughout the year to evaluate the extent you are reaching the whole student.

Teacher or Teacher Team: _____________________________________ Date: _____________

Copyright © 2017 by Corwin. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Language Power: Key Uses for Accessing Content by Margo Gottlieb and Mariana Castro. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, www.corwin.com. Reproduction authorized only for the local school site or nonprofit organization that has purchased this book.