Language Power: Key Uses for Accessing Content

Because explicit language instruction serves ALL students

Here, at last, is every K-8 teacher’s playbook on the critical role academic language plays in content learning and student achievement. What exactly is so different? Margo Gottlieb and Mariana Castro distill the complexities of language learning into four key uses through which students can probe the interplay between language and content, and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding. It’s as straight-forward as that.

Best of all, Language Power is jam-packed with hands-on, replicable resources to help you seamlessly integrate academic language into your daily routines: targeted examples, activities, and templates. Along the way, you’ll learn how to

• Identify, plan, assess, and implement academic language instruction using the Discuss, Argue, Recount, and Explain conceptual tool
• Utilize language within and across domains and content areas
• Apply the inquiry cycle to the theme of academic language use
• Expand stakeholders to include students other families 

No matter who your students are, no matter which discipline you teach, the research reads the same:  school achievement depends upon effective communication. Read Language Power, implement its resources, and soon see for yourself what a powerful tool language is in realizing this goal. 

Margo Gottlieb, Ph.D., has been a bilingual teacher, coordinator, facilitator, consultant, and mentor across K-20 settings. Having worked with universities, organizations, governments, states, school districts, networks, and schools, Margo has co-constructed linguistic and culturally sustainable curriculum and reconceptualized classroom assessment, policy, and practice. As co-founder and lead developer of WIDA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003, Margo has helped design and contributed to all the editions of WIDA’s English and Spanish language development standards frameworks and their derivative products. She has been appointed to national and state advisory boards, served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar, and was honored by the TESOL International Association in 2016 for her significant contribution to the field. An avid traveler, Margo has enjoyed keynoting and presenting across the United States, territories, and 25 countries. Having authored, co-authored, or co-edited over 100 publications, including 22 books, Margo′s 3^rd edition of Assessing Multilingual Learners: Bridges to Empowerment (2024) and Collaborative Assessment for Multilingual Learners and Teachers: Pathways to Partnerships (with A. Honigsfeld, 2025) are the latest additions to her Corwin compendium.

In 2025, Margo was inducted into the Multilingual Education Hall of Fame.

Mariana Castro, Ph.D. is Director of Standards for WIDA at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin- Madison, where she has also served as Director of Academic Language and Literacy Initiatives and Director of Teaching and Learning.  Mariana is, foremost, an educator, having taught science, ESL courses, and bilingual classes in K-12 systems.  As an educator, she also lead professional development for ESL and bilingual educators at her district. Mariana has also taught undergraduate and graduate courses at UW-Whitewater and Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin, where she lives with her husband, Andy, and three children, Amy, Andrés and Diego.  During her career as an educator, she worked with multilingual students, students with significant cognitive disabilities, and students with limited or interrupted formal education, and collaborated with educators and administrators in and out of the classroom.  It was this work that has provided the foundation and inspiration for her career.

Over the last ten years, Mariana has worked with in-service teachers and administrators across the US and abroad on building capacity related to instruction and programming with a focus on language development.  She has also presented at national conferences, including TESOL, Learning Forward, NABE, La Cosecha, ASCD, AERA, AAAL and at many regional and local conferences across the country.  Internationally, she has worked with educators in Mexico, Dubai, Thailand, and Argentina in designing spaces for meaningful participation and multilingual development for language learners.

Mariana’s service to the field include serving as an expert in policy and theory-to-practice panels related to the education of English learners, being an active member of the Second Language Research Special Interest Group at the American Educational Research Association, and serving as a reviewer for the South African Journal of Education and the TESOL Journal.  She participated in the development of the Framework for English Language Proficiency Development Standards corresponding to the Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards and in the development of a variety of standards, including WIDA English Language Development Standards, K-12; WIDA Spanish Language Development Standards, K-12; and WIDA Early Language Development Standards for children 2.5 through 5.5 years old, in English and Spanish.  She has also lead the development of multiple publications derivative of the aforementioned standards.  Mariana has also served as Principal Investigator for a variety of grants and research related to early language development, English language development, Spanish language development, data literacy, and family engagement.  Mariana’s research interests also include translanguaging and social justice in education.

Mariana’s publications include a co-edited volume Common core, bilingual and English language learners: A resource for educators (Guadalupe Valdés and Kate Menken), Formative language assessment for English learners: A Four-Step Process (MacDonald, Boals, Cook & White), a chapter in Intersectionality and urban education: Identities, policies, spaces, and power (Mancilla & Boals), and articles in Language Magazine, Soleado, and the WIDA Focus Bulletin series.