For elementary educators looking to create inclusive and effective learning environments for multilingual students, this paper provides practical guidance on designing quality learning opportunities that support these students—and all students—in realizing their full potential.

The paper explores a “three-moment lesson architecture” (Preparing Learners, Interacting With Text or Concept, Extending Understanding) for designing powerful, inviting, and challenging lessons to help students thrive academically and linguistically. Each moment is carefully explained with examples from an interdisciplinary unit for upper elementary students on the theme of waste. The lesson design approach develops specific tasks to scaffold students’ engagement with a text or concept, promote interaction with peers, and extend understanding through application to novel situations. By creating intellectually inviting and challenging opportunities coupled with high support, educators can help all students realize their full potential in achieving their dreams and goals.

Throughout the paper, there are guiding principles that educators can apply when designing or analyzing curricular units, lessons, and tasks. These principles include sustaining academic rigor, holding high expectations, engaging students in quality interactions, and promoting disciplinary language use.

The lesson design approach described in the paper emerges from the work of WestEd’s Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL) and is based on sociocultural and sociolinguistic theories of learning that highlight the central role of language and interactions in the learning process.