Shaped

A community-driven blog supporting educators, building lifelong learners,
and shaping the future of education.* 

Latest Posts

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Welcoming English Learners with a Mindset for Success

Patricia Starek, ​M.S.Ed.​
Development Director, Intervention Solutions Group, HMH

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Three Pillars of Support for Middle School English Learners

Keeping English learners engaged in academic content while they experience profound personal challenges makes our role as educators even more complex and crucial.

Dr. Elena Izquierdo
Author, Escalate English; Author ¡Arriba la Lectura!; Associate Professor, Dual Language Education / Biliteracy / ELL Education, University of Texas, El Paso

What Is Translanguaging

What Is Translanguaging in the Classroom?

What is Translanguaging? Learn the definition of translanguaging and strategies for translanguaging in the bilingual classroom.

Drs. Yvonne and David Freeman
Authors, On Our Way to English, Professors Emeriti, University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley

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Management Tips for Delivering Intensive Linguistic Support for Long-Term English Learners in Grades 4–5

Dr. Elena Izquierdo, HMH program consultant, provides post-ILA 2017 classroom-management tips for meeting the diverse needs of the long-term English learner.

Dr. Elena Izquierdo
Author, Escalate English; Author ¡Arriba la Lectura!; Associate Professor, Dual Language Education / Biliteracy / ELL Education, University of Texas, El Paso

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What It Means to Win a CODiE Award

HMH was honored on July 26 with a CODiE Award—presented by SIIA to software, information, and education technology developers—for our online English learner program, Escalate English.

Shaped Staff

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Introducing the Teachers of Beastie Hall: Meet Mrs. Wordy

Our tour of iRead’s Beastie Hall continues with Mrs. Wordy’s Word Play Classroom. See how children learn to build bigger words by understanding word parts.

Shaped Staff

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Introducing the Teachers of Beastie Hall: Next Stop, Mr. Seemore’s Sight Words Classroom

Our tour of iRead’s Beastie Hall online classrooms continues with a visit to the Sight Words Classroom of Mr. Seemore, who helps children learn high-frequency words.

Shaped Staff

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Top Takeaways from Our Literacy Experts

HMH’s spring Lead the Way to Literacy Leadership Talks have wrapped up, and we’d like to leave you with some collected wisdom from our experts.

Shaped Staff

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Ensuring Literacy and Language Gains for Long-Term English Learners: Shifting Policy and Practices

To meet new standards and shifting policies, Dr. Elena Izquierdo offers strategies for supporting long-term English learners in academic language proficiency and accessing grade-level texts.

Dr. Elena Izquierdo
Author, Escalate English; Author ¡Arriba la Lectura!; Associate Professor, Dual Language Education / Biliteracy / ELL Education, University of Texas, El Paso

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A Language Quest with Lifelong Impact, Part II

What’s the best way to advance your long-term English learners in their acquisition of academic language? Read our strategies for making active language learning a regular classroom practice.

Shaped Staff

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My Discussion on Multicultural Capital at TESOL

Author and and English learner expert Sylvia Acevedo shared with a TESOL audience how having a multicultural background offers a competitive advantage in school, in career opportunities, and in life.

Sylvia Acevedo
HMH Author and CEO, Girl Scouts of America

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Academic Language Preparation Is Key to College Readiness

Helping students distinguish between academic language and everyday English is vital to helping them meet the demands of college readiness coursework, says literacy expert Kate Kinsella.

Dr. Kate Kinsella
Author, English 3D; Co-Author, Read 180®; Teacher Educator, Researcher; CEO, Dr. Kate Kinsella & Associates

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5 Things EL Educators Can Learn from the Girl Scouts

Just in time for TESOL, Sylvia Acevedo, interim CEO of Girls Scouts of the USA, shares some inspiration for EL educators she has learned over the years from the Girl Scouts.

Shaped Staff

Spark Roundup

The Spark News Roundup: Ideas Worth Sharing

In this edition of The Spark News Roundup, we highlight a California early learning campaign to shrink language disparities by installing conversation prompts into playgrounds, an innovative scaffolding technique for teaching English-language learners, how America’s academic approaches differ from the rest of the world, and more.

HMHCo

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7 Ways to Lead the Way to Literacy — From the Experts

We asked each of our literacy experts to share what they think will move the needle in increasing reading proficiency. Here are some of the tips that stuck with us most.

HMHCo

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Three Strategies to Support English Learners

HMH program consultant Dr. Elena Izquierdo offers three strategies that can accelerate English learners’ development of academic English.

Dr. Elena Izquierdo
Author, Escalate English; Author ¡Arriba la Lectura!; Associate Professor, Dual Language Education / Biliteracy / ELL Education, University of Texas, El Paso

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Introducing the "HMH Customer Spotlight"

HMH EVP of Global Sales and Field Marketing, Lee Ramsayer, kicks off the new Spark series, the HMH Customer Spotlight, with the first customer spotlight falling on Moreno Valley Unified School District in southern California.

Lee Ramsayer
Executive Vice President, Global Sales

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Attentive Listening: An Overlooked Component of Academic Interaction

HMH program author Kate Kinsella, Ed.D. offers insights and strategies to support English learners in becoming focused listeners in the classroom.

Dr. Kate Kinsella
Author, English 3D; Co-Author, Read 180®; Teacher Educator, Researcher; CEO, Dr. Kate Kinsella & Associates

*The views expressed in our blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of HMH.