Abstract
Students attending high-needs schools experience greater pressure to increase their academic aptitude in math and English, often at the expense of quality instruction in other core subjects such as science, social science, and history. Multilingual learners require differentiated instruction. Teachers in California and across the nation feel unprepared to meet the needs of multilingual learners and seek guidance and instruction from their leaders in the form of professional development, specifically for meeting the linguistic and academic needs of multilingual learners in all core content classes. More financial resources are needed to study the effects of quality instruction in the classroom where learning is intended to occur. This qualitative study presents the intricacies and challenges a small group of urban, middle school social science teachers face in preparing and delivering differentiated instruction for multilingual learners while learning to use THE BIGSPEARS, a novel concept and method of instruction.