Celebrate International Literacy Day 2024 with Microsoft Education

Literacy is the foundation of lifelong learning. For over 50 years, UNESCO’s International Literacy Day has connected learners and educators worldwide to celebrate the power of reading and to bring attention to a fundamental human right: literacy for all. Join us in celebrating International Literacy Day 2024 on Sunday, September 8.

This year’s focus is promoting multilingual education, emphasizing the potential of literacy to foster mutual understanding and peace. Research highlights the cognitive, pedagogical, and socioeconomic benefits of a first language-based, multilingual approach—benefits you can bring to your community as a school leader and educator.

To support you in this important work, our learning tools and Learning Accelerators can help you personalize education and create supportive learning environments. These solutions offer features to enhance literacy for Multilingual Learners of English (MLEs), ensuring that every student can thrive. Additionally, Microsoft Copilot can help you develop inclusive policies and practices and empower you to cultivate lifelong learning.

Implement inclusive policies and practices for multilingual education

A first language-based, multilingual approach to education recognizes the linguistic diversity of students as an asset to learning and social participation, fostering greater equity in education. You can promote this approach by advocating for inclusive policies and implementing practices that value and include students’ culture and linguistic backgrounds.

AI-powered tools, like Copilot, offer powerful support in advancing multilingual education within your school. To get started, use Microsoft Copilot to refine and develop policies and practices that promote multilingual education. You can even upload your existing policies to get personalized recommendations and revisions. For enhanced data protection, sign in using your school account.

Here is a prompt you can personalize and use in Copilot:

Develop policies and practices to support a first language-based multilingual program, including timelines, active community involvement, and guide for implementation. Ensure that inclusive language policies are developed and supported by students, families, and staff and that the process fosters shared ownership and sustainability. Language diversity should be viewed as an asset and practices should be implemented that leverage students’ multilingual strengths. Consider programming that supports learners who are multilingual within the mainstream classroom through co-teaching and interaction in diverse groups.

As you explore the strategies from the Copilot prompt, consider which practices you can implement immediately to support MLEs in your classroom. You can also extend the prompt to think about how you might present these ideas to school leadership to support multilingual education in your school.

Empower MLEs with Microsoft tools for literacy

You can also promote multilingual education in your classrooms by leveraging the existing literacy skills of MLEs in their home languages to build on their strengths. Microsoft offers a variety of literacy solutions to support MLEs, helping you ensure that inclusive school policies translate into effective, day-to-day classroom practices.

Support access to text with Immersive Reader

Immersive Reader provides MLEs with literacy tools that help them access texts in their preferred language. This tool empowers learners to take charge of their literacy experience and customize their support.

Learn more about how you can use Immersive Reader to support literacy needs.

• Read text aloud: Build literacy skills by having text read aloud. As the text is read, the words are highlighted, allowing MLEs to follow along and match the word to the appropriate pronunciation and spelling. 
• Translate to home language: Translate individual words or the entire passage into students’ home language. This feature enables students with different levels of English proficiency to engage with the text in their preferred language.
• Visualize words: Use the Picture Dictionary tool to visualize text that represents a selected word. This tool can make it easier for MLEs to understand and retain new vocabulary.

To learn more about how to integrate these features into your classroom, check out the Immersive Reader Quick Guide.

Provide customized reading feedback with Reading Progress

Reading Progress, a Learning Accelerator, makes customized literacy instruction possible with immediate, personalized feedback, allowing MLEs to sharpen their individual literacy and pronunciation skills. Schools like the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle, United Kingdom, used Reading Progress for teaching Spanish as a foreign language and made significant literacy gains in Spanish:

• 22.43 words-per-minute increase in reading rate.
• 13.29% improvement in reading accuracy.
• A reduction of 7 average mispronunciations per task.

Learn more about how you can use Reading Progress to support the literacy needs of MLEs.

• AI-generated passages: Create personalized reading passages by selecting challenge words, topics, age, length, and language for your MLEs.
• Comprehension questions: Develop comprehension questions with the power of AI and edit them before sharing with students, providing a tailored reading experience. Customize the questions to the needs of MLEs to help students gain lifelong reading comprehension skills.
• Pronunciation sensitivity: Support your MLE with customized pronunciation sensitivity that accommodates your student’s speech pattern and accent. This tool can help your students develop nuanced pronunciation skills for challenging words.

Discover more in the Reading Progress Quick Guide and the “Support reading fluency practice with Reading Progress” training module on Microsoft Learn.

Offer opportunities for literacy practice with Reading Coach

Reading Coach Preview offers personalized reading fluency practice through AI-generated stories with customizable characters and settings, and options to choose your own path through the story. This innovative tool supports students with targeted word practice, motivational rewards, and includes Immersive Reader for a fully accessible learning experience.

Learn more about how you can use Reading Coach to support literacy needs.

• AI generated stories: Generate unique stories with the “Create a Story” mode that offers 26 main characters, from dogs to dragons, and 13 varied locations like castles or outer space. Students pick a character and location, set their reading level, and AI crafts a story with the option to choose a path through each chapter. Challenging words from one chapter are automatically included in the next chapter.
• Pick passages from a library or add your own content: Educators can help students pick leveled passages from a curated library of fiction and non-fiction passages or provide their own content to read.
• Practice pronunciation with coaching: Practice difficult words and explore their pronunciation through visual syllable cues, hearing the word read out aloud, and getting coached on the mispronunciation. This feature helps MLEs decode text and access content more effectively.

Reading Coach Preview is currently available for free in English to use at school with a Microsoft Entra ID (school account) or at home using a personal Microsoft account. Get started with Reading Coach online or download the Windows app.

Discover more about AI-generated reading passages in Reading Coach Preview with the Reading Coach with AI stories Quick Guide and the “Build reading fluency with Reading Coach” training course on Microsoft Learn.

Get actionable literacy data with Education Insights

Education Insights in Microsoft Teams for Education offers a wide range of actionable student data to help you make informed decisions to support each student’s unique academic and linguistic needs. With Education Insights, you can easily streamline your decision-making process, analyze academic and literacy trends, and identify students who may need additional support.

Learn more about how you can use Education Insights to support the literacy needs of MLEs.

• Analyze progress and data: Review individual, group, and whole class data efficiently to monitor reading progress and inform inclusive instructional decisions. This tool provides a clear overview that helps you quickly identify trends and address challenges that MLEs may be having.
• Practice challenging words: Create personalized or whole-class practice assignments to address MLEs’ reading and language needs. Education Insights analyzes challenging words and phonics rules from Reading Progress and Reading Coach data to inform instruction and create vocabulary activities that target areas where students need the most support.

To learn more about using Education Insights to explore actionable student data and support literacy, visit the Educator’s guide to Insights in Microsoft Teams from Microsoft Support.

Celebrate International Literacy Day 2024 with us and empower your MLEs through cutting-edge learning tools from Microsoft. Get started with Learning Accelerators and transform your classroom with a multilingual approach that meets every learner’s needs.