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District expands multilingual learning-walks to boost student speaking
Summary
The multilingual department described an initiative to expand daily, scaffolded speaking opportunities for multilingual learners, using learning walks, coaching, and a rubric to increase oral academic language and measure classroom practice.
The Revere School Committee heard Feb. 10 from multilingual department director Jen Labalita about an initiative to expand authentic speaking opportunities for multilingual learners.
Labalita described two rounds of districtwide, non-evaluative learning walks in 2023–24 and 2024–25 that tested a district rubric and informed the focus on oral academic interaction. "Our goal: all students engage in pre-planned daily opportunities for authentic speaking interactions using target academic language with appropriate scaffolds," she said, outlining supports such as sentence stems, word banks and small-group routines.
The department said coaches and school teams have conducted many walkthroughs (dozens per school in some cases), debriefed trends and provided professional development modules that included video exemplars and planning time. Labalita said the goal is to see speaking growth reflected in ACCESS results and other measures in coming years.
Committee members asked how the initiative reaches shy students and how many classrooms were observed; Labalita said supports such as small groups, sentence frames and teacher scaffolds are designed to bring every student into discussion and that walkthroughs have included 20–40 classrooms at some buildings over multiple rounds.
