Reading
Read-Aloud
Shared Reading
Guided Reading
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The ability to read and comprehend text is a vital component that plays a significant part in all other content areas. If one cannot read and comprehend what he/she reads one becomes limited to the knowledge that he/she can acquire, thus one becomes significantly disadvantage in learning material within other content areas such as science, social studies, math, etc. In short, reading is an absolutely necessary skill that enables one to simply learn. However, reading is a much more complicated task than most realize. The task of reading becomes even more challenging when what one is reading is not in their primary (first) language. This is extremely important for teachers to recognize and consider when teaching emergent bilingual students.
There are many steps and strategies that a teacher can instill within the curriculum to help facilitate reading skills and comprehension of emergent bilingual students. Balanced Reading: Just like with all student's, emergent bilinguals students should receive a balanced instruction of reading
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Along with a balanced reading curriculum, there should be a verity of strategies and activities before, during, and after reading texts.
Before Strategies- help build necessary background knowledge and further help draw upon students prior knowledge/understanding of concepts
Examples of Pre-Reading Strategies:
Before Strategies- help build necessary background knowledge and further help draw upon students prior knowledge/understanding of concepts
Examples of Pre-Reading Strategies:
- Group or Partner Brainstorming- have students predict what the text may be about by looking at the pictures, title, or other clues
- Vocabulary search- have students work in groups or partners to skim the text before fully reading it in order to find any unfamiliar vocabulary terms/ words. Teacher might need to predetermine any other words (specifically Tier 2-3 words) that emergent bilinguals may need more work with to go over as well
- Pre-questions- have students work in groups to discuss pre-question or predictions they have over the text
- Visual Aids- have pictures to help activate knowledge and connections between text and prior experiences of students
- Structural or Graphic Organizers- Teacher provides a single phrase or term that the text is related to and students in groups work together to brainstorm all the possible connections or ideas related to the term.
- Videos or other visual- Have students discuss over a verity of visual aids and have them make predictions, draw their own conclusions from visuals
- Class Discussions- Discussions emergent bilinguals are immersed in meaningful instructional conversations, where the teacher leads a discussion designed to maximize students' comprehension of the text. Such classroom discussions held during or after reading help emergent bilinguals across grade levels "determine the central ideas and themes; summarize key supporting details and make logical inferences based on evidence from the text, and point of view" (Wright, 2015).
- Reader Response- Students reflect and think about what they read, as they do so they ask authentic questions, make comments and connections, and form opinions. Reader response could include group work where students:
- Create graphic organizers of main ideas, thoughts, events and point of views
- Summarizing specific part of the text (beginning, middle, end) in their own words
- Drawing events of the text and labeling aspects of their group drawings
- Re-writing an event of the story/text
- Making further predictions of what happened or what could have happened
- Making a list of connections amongst the group and the text
- Comparing and Contrasting other text, events, or themes (text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world)
- Graphic Organizers- There are many different ways students can work together and build graphic organizers over the content of what they read. This will help build a visual for students and further help emergent bilinguals comprehension.
- Readers Theater- Students act out scenes of the text
- Class-Made Books- Create a mini book of story by drawing favorite scenes of text and summarizing event taking place in student's own words
Vocabulary
Although vocabulary knowledge is only one feature of developing language acquisition and literacy knowledge, it is without a doubt a very crucial component that students of language must develop. Put simply, the more words emergent bilinguals know, the more they can speak, write, read, and understand what they hear and say. Furthermore, it is essential to teach certain vocabulary terms so that emergent bilingual students, along with all students, can further understand academic rich and/or complex texts.
Obviously, teachers cannot possibly teach all English vocabulary words directly to students, thus it is "absolutely imperative for teachers to engage students in the right rich kinds of oral language activities, and to get them engaged in extensive reading for these are the primary means at which ELLs will naturally acquire the vast number of new vocabulary words in English. Teachers should focus and recognize level of vocabulary words that they are presenting to the class and should further determine if which words are either tier 1, tier 2, or tier 3 words. When teaching emergent bilinguals teachers should focus on explicitly teaching tier 2 and tier 3 words for such words are more challenging and heavily rely on context. Note: Tier 1 words are basic words Tier 2 words are high-frequency words that apply different or the same in many academic content areas and/or context areas. Tier 3 words are more specific to a particular content area and/ or discourse Explicitly teaching vocabulary words, meaning defining a vocabulary word, is not efficient. Students need multiple exposures to the use of a vocabulary term. The term needs to be analyzed, used, connected to, and made more authentic in order for students to fully comprehend and add vocabulary term to their own oral abilities. This being said there are many activities students can engage in while learning new vocabulary. Here is a list of different activities students can and should engage in while learning new vocabulary terms:
All of these activities should be included when having students learn a new vocabulary term, because these activities allow for multiple exposure of what, when, and how to use a new vocabulary word. Furthermore, including such activities allows for a robust vocabulary instruction to take place. Building a robust vocabulary instructions is key for such instructions allows for new vocabulary terms to be "brought to life" for students. Robust vocabulary instruction includes engaging activities (like the ones above) and allows for students to build multiple connections to the word to make the word more solidified within their own understanding. |
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Writing
List of Activities for Developing Writing
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Like reading and developing vocabulary, writing is also an important, even crucial, skill that students must learn in order to be successful in all academic areas and in life. Learning to write can be a difficult task for anyone, but it can be especially challenging for someone who is having to write in a language that is not their first language. Just imagine having to learn how to speak a language at the same time as having to learn how to display one's knowledge through the conventions of his or her writing. Essentially, emergent bilingual student's are having to learn how to write before they are even fully proficient in speaking English. One can understand that this would be a very difficult task to learn and accomplish. Thus it is essential for teachers to build in techniques, activities, and scaffolds that help facilitate emergent bilingual students and their writing.
Here is a list of things to consider when working with emergent bilingual writers:
Researchers have found that there is a strong relationship between emergent bilinguals reading ability and their writing ability in English Here is a list of things to consider about the relationship between Reading and Writing:
The strong relationship between reading and writing can also be connected to the relationship between vocabulary. Vocabulary builds one understanding of how to comprehend what they read which then can be transferred into their writing as well. Because there is such a strong relationship between all three aspects of literacy many of the activities from the above Reading and Vocabulary section can be adjusted and applied to help scaffold students writing as well. However there are further instructional techniques and activities that a teacher should consider and use to help support emergent bilinguals writing. |
Works Cited
- Wright, W. E. (2010). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory. Policy and Practice. Philadelphia: Caslon Publishing