1. Multilingual learners’ languages and cultures are valuable resources to be leveraged for schooling and classroom life; leveraging these assets and challenging biases help develop multilingual learners’ independence and encourage their agency in learning.

2. Multilingual learners’ development of multiple languages enhances their knowledge and cultural bases, their intellectual capacities, and their flexibility in language use.

3. Multilingual learners’ language development occurs over time through meaningful engagement in activities that are valued in their homes, schools, and communities.

4. Multilingual learners’ language, social-emotional, and cognitive development are interrelated processes that contribute to their success in school and beyond.

5. Multilingual learners use and develop language when opportunities for learning take into account their individual experiences, characteristics, knowledge, skills, and levels of language proficiency.

6. Multilingual learners use and develop language through activities that intentionally integrate multiple modalities, including oral, written, visual, and kinesthetic modes of communication.

7. Multilingual learners use and develop language to interpret and access information, ideas, and concepts from a variety of sources, including real-life objects, models, representations, and multimodal texts.

8. Multilingual learners draw on their metacognitive, metalinguistic, and metacultural awareness to develop effectiveness in language use.

9. Multilingual learners use their full linguistic repertoire, including translanguaging practices, to enrich their language development and learning.

10. Multilingual learners use and develop language to interpret and present different perspectives, build awareness of relationships, and affirm their identities.

(adapted from WIDA’s Guiding Principles of Language Development, 2020