Book excerpt: Meeting the needs of English language learners is one of the biggest challenges facing American schools today. Practical classroom strategies are essential, but it is also critical for educators to understand the rationale behind them: why a technique or methodology is working or not working for their students. Engage the Creative Arts is designed to build that understanding while also stimulating teachers' imagination to help them invent new strategies of their own. The book introduces the ENGAGE Framework for Sheltering and Scaffolding Language the Natural Way, an approach developed by Sharon Adelman Reyes based on more than 30 years of experience working with English language learners. It emphasizes methodologies that are grounded in a constructivist educational philosophy and a comprehensive theory of language acquisition. Rather than prescriptive, step-by-step recipes for instruction, it features strategies that are open-ended, creative, and best of all, engaging for students. Engage the Creative Arts is full of hands-on, ready-to-use activities in dramatic arts, creative writing, music and rhythm, dance and movement, and visual arts, along with ideas for developing many more. But the ENGAGE Framework can be applied to any academic content area. And it is designed for all teachers who work with second language learners, whether in bilingual, English as a second language, dual immersion, heritage language, or world language classrooms.