As schools welcome students back to the classroom, educators face a critical opportunity: making sure that multilingual learners, bilingual students, and English language learners (ELLs) feel supported, included, and ready to thrive from day one.
Whether students are newcomers to your school or developing their second language acquisition skills, a welcoming learning environment is key to promoting language development, cross-cultural competence, and academic confidence.
In our recent webinar, “Welcoming Multilingual Learners: Inclusive Back-to-School Strategies from Day One,” Book Creator’s K–12 Curriculum Lead Christina Mahar shared classroom-ready ideas to help educators create equitable, accessible spaces that support language learning and build student voice.
💡 Why multilingual education starts with belonging
Multilingual learners bring diverse languages, cultures, and lived experiences into our schools. Yet many still face barriers to fully participating in classroom life—especially during those crucial first weeks.
Creating a classroom environment that supports bilingual education, heritage language learners, and newcomer students is more than a warm welcome—it’s a foundation for lasting success. Christina’s strategies showed how simple design shifts can promote language proficiency, reduce anxiety, and foster strong home-school connections.
Strategies for supporting multilingual learners with Book Creator
During the session, Christina demonstrated how Book Creator’s intuitive, flexible features can be used to support multilingual learners across content areas. Here’s what educators discovered:
- Use audio recording tools so students can speak and listen in their home language or English
- Tap into multilingual translation to create materials that families can access and understand
- Combine draw, type, and video features to give students multiple ways to demonstrate learning
- Build interactive welcome books and classroom tour guides to familiarize students with new environments
- Create visual vocabulary journals to reinforce academic English and school-based vocabulary
- Remix templates to reflect your students’ cultural backgrounds and linguistic strengths
Real classroom stories: what educators are doing
Throughout the webinar, Christina spotlighted real-world examples of educators using Book Creator to support bilingual instruction and multilingual literacy development.
From designing All About Me books that empower students to share their identities, to creating translated family guides for Back-to-School Night, the message was clear: small, intentional actions can lead to big results in building connection and confidence.
School tour books: a game-changer for newcomer students
One standout strategy? Creating School Tour Books in Book Creator.
These personalized digital books walk students through your building using images, translated text, and audio narration. They help reduce confusion, build confidence, and support basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS).
Educators can easily:
- 📸 Upload real photos of school locations
- 🎙️ Add audio narration in English and other languages
- 📝 Translate key information to support comprehension
- 🧒 Invite students to co-create new pages and share their perspective
💡 Pro Tip: Create different versions of the book for grade bands or languages to meet learners where they are.
By giving students the tools to understand their environment, School Tour Books promote student agency, reduce anxiety, and build trust—especially for international students entering a new system.
Better teaching reaches every learner
When we intentionally design for multilingual students, we create classrooms where all learners can grow—academically, socially, and emotionally. This approach supports multicultural education, builds intercultural competence, and aligns with the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
By using tools like Book Creator, educators can make english language acquisition programs more engaging, accessible, and equitable.
Keep learning with us
Ready to take the next step?
Join us for our upcoming webinars where we’ll explore more strategies, share ready-to-use templates, and highlight success stories from classrooms around the world.
Let’s keep building classrooms where every student belongs—and every language is valued.
Get Book Creator for your school!
- Upgraded accounts for all your teachers
- Implementation plan to help with rollout
- PD support
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With 20 years of experience in education, Katie is passionate about creating inclusive and accessible classrooms for all students. She loves exploring new places, trying different foods, and connecting with fellow educators.
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