Some Tips for Working with Multilingual Students (And All Students)

The University of Minnesota document “Supporting Multilingual Students” is useful for TAs, not only because it provides tips in working with students whose native language might not be English, but also because many of those tips are also useful for working with other students.

In particular, the document provides several tips and resources (you might need to scroll down). Some of the ideas are class design decisions that would be made by the teacher rather than by TAs (although TAs are welcome to suggest ideas to the teacher if they see any that are particularly relevant and useful). However, some of them are ideas TAs can adopt in their usual TA duties.

Your Task:

• Spend about 20 minutes exploring the site, focusing on items you think will be most useful in your TAing.
   
• Select one or more ideas to use in your TA work this semester. Think specifically about how you will use those ideas, and set up a couple reminders throughout the semester so you remember to actually use them.