Our Approach

Learning Design Rooted in Equity, Language, Identity, and Transformation

Intrigue Me designs learning experiences with a clear belief: students do not all enter learning from the same place, and they should not be expected to access learning through one pathway.

Our approach is grounded in two original frameworks: the HEART Framework and the LET Taxonomy.

Together, these frameworks guide how we design curriculum, AI-powered tools, digital notebooks, progress tracking systems, learning resources, professional development, and consulting solutions.

The HEART Framework guides the human-centered side of our work. It focuses on the emotional, cultural, social, and equity conditions students need in order to thrive.

The LET Taxonomy guides the instructional design side of our work. It helps educators structure language learning across domains, knowledge types, and cognitive processes so learners can move from foundational understanding to meaningful application, advocacy, and transformation.

Together, HEART and LET help us design learning experiences that are scaffolded, differentiated, culturally responsive, and deeply connected to the needs of multilingual and diverse learners.

The H.E.A.R.T. Framework

Helping English Learners Achieve Resilience and Transformation

Download

The HEART Framework, which stands for Helping English Learners Achieve Resilience and Transformation, is Intrigue Me’s human-centered framework for designing learning experiences that support English Language Learners and diverse learners academically, emotionally, culturally, and socially.

HEART was created from the belief that language learning is not only an academic process. For many learners, it is also a deeply personal experience shaped by confidence, identity, belonging, culture, access, and the ability to advocate for oneself in new learning environments.

The framework is organized around five connected priorities.

Through HEART, Intrigue Me designs tools, curriculum, and learning systems that help educators move beyond basic access and toward learning experiences that are inclusive, affirming, scaffolded, and transformative.

The Core Priorities of HEART

The HEART Framework is organized around five connected priorities:

Socio-Emotional Support
Equity
Advocacy
Cultural Responsiveness
Transformation

Each priority helps educators create learning environments where students feel seen, supported, and empowered.

Socio-Emotional Support

Socio-emotional support is at the center of the HEART Framework. It focuses on creating safe, supportive, and affirming learning environments where students can build resilience, confidence, and a sense of belonging.

For multilingual learners, socio-emotional support is especially important because language learning often requires vulnerability. Students may be afraid of making mistakes, being misunderstood, or being judged by peers. HEART recognizes that students need emotional safety in order to take academic risks.

In practice, socio-emotional support may include:

Classroom routines that create predictability and safety
Relationship-building activities
Peer collaboration and peer mentorship
Reflection journals
Mindfulness and emotional regulation strategies
Opportunities for students to share personal experiences
Low-pressure ways to participate before speaking publicly
Teacher feedback that emphasizes growth, not deficit

When students feel safe and supported, they are more likely to participate, ask questions, collaborate, and persist through challenges.

Equity

Equity ensures that learners have access to the resources, opportunities, scaffolds, accommodations, and instructional pathways they need to succeed.

In HEART, equity is not about giving every learner the same materials or the same task. Equity is about designing learning so every student has a meaningful way to access content, engage with ideas, and demonstrate understanding.

For multilingual and diverse learners, equity may require:

Differentiated instruction
Bilingual or multilingual supports
Sentence frames and language stems
Visuals, models, and examples
Assistive technologies
Tiered tasks
Flexible grouping
Extended time
Multiple ways to show learning
Data-informed instructional decisions

Equity also requires educators to identify systemic barriers. If a student is not successful, HEART asks us to look beyond the student and examine the design of the learning experience.

What support was missing?
What assumption did the lesson make?
What language demand was hidden?
What access point could be added?

Through HEART, equity becomes an active design responsibility.

Advocacy

Advocacy empowers learners to understand their needs, articulate their goals, seek support, and use language as a tool for self-expression, leadership, and community engagement.

For English Language Learners, advocacy is essential because students are often navigating systems, expectations, and academic language that may be unfamiliar. HEART helps educators create opportunities for students to build the confidence and communication skills needed to participate in their own learning journey.

Advocacy may include:

Student goal-setting
Self-assessment and reflection
Student-led conferences
Choice-based projects
Classroom leadership roles
Opportunities to express needs and preferences
Family engagement and resource sharing
Community-based projects
Activities where students use language to address real issues

Advocacy also extends to educators and families. Teachers advocate by designing equitable learning environments. Families advocate by understanding how to support and navigate their child’s education. Students advocate by learning how to name what they need, communicate their ideas, and participate with agency.

Cultural Responsiveness

Cultural responsiveness validates and celebrates students’ cultural identities, languages, lived experiences, and communities.

HEART recognizes that language and culture are deeply connected. Students do not leave their identities at the classroom door. Their home languages, traditions, stories, values, and community experiences shape how they understand the world and how they engage with learning.

Culturally responsive learning may include:

Texts and examples that reflect students’ identities
Opportunities for students to share cultural knowledge
Multicultural literature and media
Home language connections
Projects connected to students’ communities
Critical conversations about bias, identity, and representation
Family and community connections
Activities that value multiple perspectives

Cultural responsiveness is not an add-on. It is part of meaningful learning design. When students see themselves in the learning experience, they are more likely to feel connected, motivated, and valued.

Transformation

Transformation is the outcome HEART works toward.

The goal is not only academic achievement. The goal is also growth in confidence, identity, agency, communication, belonging, and the ability to use language and learning as tools for empowerment and change.

Transformation happens when students begin to see themselves differently as learners, communicators, creators, leaders, and contributors.

A transformative learning experience may help a student:

Speak with more confidence
Connect learning to identity
Advocate for themselves or others
Use language to participate in a community issue
Reflect on their growth
Build pride in their culture and language
See themselves as capable of academic success
Use knowledge in meaningful, real-world ways

Through HEART, Intrigue Me designs tools and curriculum that support the whole learner, not just the completion of assignments.

Socio-Emotional Support

Socio-emotional support is at the center of the HEART Framework. It focuses on creating safe, supportive learning environments where students feel valued, build confidence, develop resilience, and feel a sense of belonging.

Equity

Equity ensures that learners have access to the resources, scaffolds, opportunities, accommodations, and instructional pathways they need to succeed. In HEART, equity is not about giving every learner the same thing; it is about designing learning so that every learner can meaningfully access and engage with it.

Advocacy

Advocacy empowers learners to understand their needs, articulate their goals, seek support, and use language as a tool for self-expression, leadership, and community engagement. It also encourages educators and families to become partners in supporting learner growth.

Responsiveness

Cultural responsiveness validates and celebrates students’ cultural identities, languages, lived experiences, and communities. It helps educators design learning experiences that reflect who students are and connect academic learning to meaningful cultural and real-world contexts.

Transformation

The HEART Framework is Intrigue Me’s human-centered framework for designing learning experiences that support English Language Learners and diverse learners academically, emotionally, culturally, and socially.

HEART was created from the understanding that language learning is not only an academic process. For many students, learning a new language also involves navigating confidence, identity, belonging, culture, access, communication, and self-advocacy.

A learner may understand an idea but lack the language to express it. A student may have deep knowledge from their home, community, or prior schooling, but need support transferring that knowledge into a new academic environment. Another learner may need emotional safety before they are ready to take risks with speaking, writing, or participating.

The HEART Framework helps educators design for these realities.

It asks educators to consider not only what students are learning, but also how students are experiencing learning, what barriers they may be navigating, and what supports can help them grow with confidence.

The L.E.T. Taxonomy

Linguistic Equity and Transformative Learning

Download

The LET Taxonomy stands for Linguistic Equity and Transformative Learning. It is Intrigue Me’s instructional design framework for creating language learning experiences that are equitable, culturally responsive, cognitively meaningful, and transformative.

LET was developed to address a major gap in traditional instructional planning: language learners are often expected to engage with academic content while simultaneously developing the language needed to access, process, and express that content.

This means language learning must be designed intentionally.

LET helps educators design learning experiences that account for:

How students receive language
How students produce language
How students connect language to culture and identity
How students apply language in real contexts
How students use language to reflect, advocate, and transform

The LET Taxonomy combines three major dimensions:

Language Learning Domains
Knowledge Types
Cognitive Processes

Together, these dimensions help educators move beyond basic language practice and toward deeper, more meaningful language learning.

Dimension 1: Language Learning Domains

The LET Taxonomy begins with the language learning domains students use to access and express understanding.

These domains include:

Listening

Listening involves understanding spoken language in academic, social, and real-world contexts.

Students may listen to teachers, peers, videos, directions, stories, discussions, or community interactions.

Listening support may include:

Audio modeling
Repetition
Visual cues
Captions
Gestures
Guided listening questions
Partner talk before whole-group discussion

Speaking

Speaking involves expressing ideas clearly, effectively, and appropriately across contexts.

Students may speak during discussions, presentations, collaborative tasks, interviews, role-plays, or reflections.

Speaking support may include:

Sentence frames
Rehearsal time
Conversation stems
Partner practice
Visual prompts
Choice in presentation format
Low-stakes speaking opportunities

Reading

Reading involves understanding written texts across genres, subjects, and cultural contexts.

Students may read stories, articles, instructions, charts, websites, primary sources, or digital texts.

Reading support may include:

Vocabulary previews
Bilingual glossaries
Chunked text
Graphic organizers
Read-aloud options
Annotated examples
Culturally relevant texts

Writing

Writing involves producing coherent, purposeful, and culturally meaningful communication.

Students may write reflections, summaries, stories, explanations, arguments, scripts, captions, or project proposals.

Writing support may include:

Writing frames
Word banks
Mentor texts
Drafting tools
Graphic organizers
Feedback cycles
Multimodal composition options

Cultural Navigation

LET also recognizes that language learning includes cultural navigation.

Students are not only learning words and grammar; they are learning how language works in different social, cultural, and academic environments.

Cultural navigation includes understanding:

Classroom expectations
Academic norms
Social cues
Registers of language
Community contexts
Cultural references
Ways language changes across settings

This is especially important for learners who are navigating a new school system, new country, new language environment, or new academic culture.

Collaborative Communication

LET also emphasizes collaborative communication.

Language develops through interaction, relationship, and shared meaning-making.

Collaborative communication includes:

Peer discussion
Group problem-solving
Partner interviews
Shared storytelling
Project collaboration
Peer feedback
Cross-cultural dialogue

Through collaborative communication, students build interpersonal language, academic language, and intercultural understanding.

Dimension 2: Knowledge Types

The LET Taxonomy identifies five knowledge types that shape meaningful language learning.

These knowledge types help educators design lessons that go beyond vocabulary and grammar alone.

Linguistic Knowledge

Linguistic knowledge includes vocabulary, grammar, syntax, phonology, language structures, and communication patterns. This is the foundation of language learning.

Students need explicit support with the words, forms, and structures that help them understand and express meaning.

Examples include:

Academic vocabulary
Sentence structure
Verb tense
Word order
Pronunciation
Transition words
Question formation
Language functions such as compare, explain, argue, describe, and justify

Cultural Knowledge

Cultural knowledge includes understanding the norms, traditions, values, stories, histories, and contexts connected to language use.

This matters because language is never separate from culture.

The way people communicate is shaped by identity, community, history, and context.

Examples include:

Cultural traditions
Idioms and expressions
Storytelling practices
Cultural references in texts
Community knowledge
Values and perspectives
Home language connections

Social Knowledge

Social knowledge includes understanding how language functions in relationships, groups, institutions, and society.

Students need to know not only what words mean, but how, when, where, and why language is used in different contexts.

Examples include:

Formal and informal language
Classroom discussion norms
Turn-taking
Asking for help
Giving feedback
Disagreeing respectfully
Presenting to different audiences
Understanding register and tone

Reflective Knowledge

Reflective knowledge involves self-awareness of one’s learning process, growth, challenges, identity, and goals.

Students need opportunities to reflect on how they learn, what supports them, what they are proud of, and what they still need.

Examples include:

Learning journals
Goal-setting
Self-assessment
Reflection prompts
Student conferences
Portfolio reflections
Identity-based writing
Growth tracking

Transformative Knowledge

Transformative knowledge involves using language to examine the world, advocate for oneself and others, challenge inequities, and contribute to change.

This is where language becomes more than a school skill. It becomes a tool for participation, empowerment, and agency.

Examples include:

Community advocacy projects
Social justice discussions
Student-led presentations
Public service announcements
Letters to decision-makers
Cultural awareness campaigns
Global citizenship projects
Solutions-based learning

Dimension 3: Cognitive Processes

The LET Taxonomy includes six cognitive processes that describe how learners move from early exposure to deeper, more transformative language use.

These processes are:

Absorbing
Connecting
Applying
Analyzing
Advocating
Transforming

Absorbing

Absorbing is the foundational level. Students are introduced to new language, concepts, vocabulary, structures, and cultural cues.

At this level, students may:

Recognize new words
Repeat phrases
Match images to vocabulary
Listen for key ideas
Identify language patterns
Build background knowledge

Absorbing is not passive. It is the beginning of access.

Connecting

Connecting helps students relate new language and concepts to prior knowledge, personal experience, home language, culture, and community.

At this level, students may:

Compare ideas across languages
Connect a text to personal experience
Discuss similarities and differences
Use home language knowledge as a bridge
Make cultural or real-world connections

Connecting helps students see learning as relevant and meaningful.

Applying

Applying asks students to use language in real or simulated contexts.

At this level, students may:

Role-play a conversation
Ask for directions
Write a summary
Participate in a group task
Conduct an interview
Present information
Use vocabulary in a project

Applying helps students move from knowing language to using language.

Analyzing

Analyzing asks students to examine language, texts, ideas, systems, and cultural contexts more deeply.

At this level, students may:

Break down sentence structures
Analyze a character’s perspective
Identify bias in media
Compare cultural viewpoints
Explain how language shapes meaning
Evaluate a problem or issue

Analyzing supports deeper comprehension and critical thinking.

Advocating

Advocating asks students to use language to express needs, values, perspectives, and solutions.

At this level, students may:

State a learning goal
Ask for support
Defend an opinion
Present a proposal
Speak about a community issue
Collaborate on a solution
Use evidence to support a claim

Advocating helps students develop voice, agency, and leadership.

Transforming

Transforming is the highest level of the LET Taxonomy. It focuses on how language learning can shape identity, confidence, worldview, and action.

At this level, students may:

Reflect on how their language journey has changed them
Use language to contribute to a community
Create a project that challenges stereotypes
Share cultural knowledge with others
Advocate for equity
See themselves as multilingual, capable, and powerful communicators

Transforming reminds us that language learning is not only about proficiency. It is also about identity, belonging, and possibility.

How HEART and LET Work Together:

HEART and LET are designed to work together.

HEART asks:
What does the learner need to feel supported, seen, valued, and empowered?

LET asks:
How should the learning experience be structured so the learner can build language, knowledge, cognition, and agency?

HEART provides the human-centered foundation.
LET provides the instructional design structure.

Together, they help educators create learning experiences that support both access and growth.

HEART + LET Alignment

Socio-Emotional Support + Reflective Knowledge

Students need opportunities to reflect on their emotions, confidence, identity, and growth. Digital journals, self-assessments, portfolios, and student conferences can help learners understand themselves as developing communicators.

Equity + Language Domains

Students need equitable access to listening, speaking, reading, and writing tasks. This means offering scaffolds, multimodal resources, bilingual supports, assistive tools, and multiple ways to demonstrate understanding.

Advocacy + Cognitive Processes

Students need opportunities to move from absorbing information to applying, analyzing, advocating, and transforming. Advocacy becomes possible when students are given language tools, confidence, audience, and purpose.

Cultural Responsiveness + Cultural and Social Knowledge

Students need learning experiences that connect to culture, identity, community, and real-world contexts. Culturally responsive design helps students see their backgrounds as assets in the learning process.

Transformation + Transformative Knowledge

Students need opportunities to use language and learning beyond the classroom. Transformation happens when students use knowledge to shape identity, participate in community, challenge inequity, and imagine new possibilities.

What This Looks Like in Practice

A HEART and LET-aligned learning experience might include:

A culturally relevant text or real-world issue
Vocabulary and language scaffolds
Opportunities to listen, speak, read, and write
Student reflection
Peer collaboration
Choice in how students demonstrate understanding
A project connected to identity, community, or advocacy
Rubrics that assess growth, not only correctness
Teacher feedback that builds confidence and next steps

For example, students might explore a community issue, read accessible texts about the topic, learn key vocabulary, interview peers or family members, write a proposal, present their ideas, and reflect on how language helped them participate in meaningful change.

In that one experience, students are building language skills, cultural knowledge, social knowledge, critical thinking, confidence, and agency.

How Our Approach Powers Our Products

Our frameworks are not separate from our products. They are built into the way Intrigue Me designs tools, curriculum, and services.

TeachMe

HEART helps TeachMe generate lessons that consider equity, socio-emotional support, cultural responsiveness, advocacy, and transformation.

LET helps TeachMe structure lessons around language domains, knowledge types, cognitive processes, scaffolds, and assessments.

Through TeachMe, educators can create:

Standards-aligned lesson plans
Language objectives
Scaffolded activities
Differentiation supports
Rubrics
Assessments
Classroom resources
Reflection prompts
Multimodal learning materials

TeachMe is designed to help teachers plan faster without losing instructional depth or learner-centered design.

Track Me

TrackMe is our learning intelligence platform for tracking student growth, organizing student work, and supporting instructional insight.

HEART helps TrackMe focus on the whole learner by making space for reflection, confidence, agency, and culturally meaningful learning evidence.

LET helps TrackMe organize progress across language domains, skills, learning goals, cognitive growth, student work, and teacher observations.

TrackMe may include:

Digital notebooks
Student portfolios
Language progress tracking
Teacher dashboards
Admin insights
LMS-style learning spaces
Family progress summaries
Data inquiry tools
Intervention and scaffolding notes

TrackMe helps educators move from collecting assignments to understanding learning.

Transform Me

Transform Me is our consulting, professional development, curriculum design, and implementation support service.

HEART guides the way we help schools create inclusive, supportive, and culturally responsive systems.

LET guides the way we help educators design curriculum, assessments, learning experiences, and progress monitoring tools.

Transform Me services may include:

Curriculum design
EdTech strategy
AI implementation support
Professional development
Data inquiry systems
Custom learning tools
School and district pilots
Grant implementation support
Multilingual learner program design

Transform Me helps schools and organizations turn ideas into systems that can be implemented, supported, and improved over time.

CodeLingual

CodeLingual is Intrigue Me’s signature curriculum model that connects language acquisition, literacy, computational thinking, coding, storytelling, and digital fluency.

HEART helps CodeLingual center identity, confidence, collaboration, cultural responsiveness, and student agency.

LET helps CodeLingual structure learning across language domains, knowledge types, and cognitive processes.

Through CodeLingual, students use language and technology to create, communicate, problem-solve, and express ideas in meaningful ways.

Why This Approach Matters

Many education tools focus on content delivery. Others focus on productivity, assessment, or data.

Intrigue Me focuses on the full learning experience.

We believe educators need tools that help them:

Understand learners more fully
Design with equity from the beginning
Make language demands visible
Provide meaningful scaffolds
Connect learning to culture and identity
Support student confidence and agency
Track growth over time
Use technology with purpose
Create learning experiences that are human-centered and transformative

Our approach helps educators move beyond compliance-based instruction and toward learning design that is intentional, responsive, and empowering.

Design Learning with HEART. Structure Learning with LET.

HEART helps us remember the human side of learning.

LET helps us design the instructional pathway.

Together, they help Intrigue Me create products and services that support multilingual and diverse learners through access, engagement, reflection, growth, and transformation.

Whether you are a teacher designing tomorrow’s lesson, a school leader building a stronger learning system, or a district team rethinking how technology supports instruction, our approach helps you design learning experiences that see the whole learner.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse