National Committee for Effective Literacy (NCEL) Virtual Summit Presentation: From Words to Worlds: Multilingual Story Boxes

Event: National Committee for Effective Literacy (NCEL) Virtual Summit
Location: Zoom
Date & Time: January 21, 2026 | 9:25 AM – 10:15 AM
Session Format: Presentation
Presenter(s): Maria Cieslak (Center for Applied Linguistics)

Description:
This session reimagines multilingual story boxes for elementary and secondary classrooms. Participants will explore how story boxes can serve as platforms for inquiry, identity exploration, and literacy development across disciplines. Using five guiding principles – dialogic pedagogy, multimodal and multilingual response, translanguaging, multilingual text creation, and family and community engagement – teachers will learn how to design story box projects that connect students’ linguistic repertoires to curricular goals. Through reflection and collaborative planning, educators will discover how storytelling can transform content learning into culturally sustaining literacy practice.