- Pre-reading: Students review reading strategies in order to encourage making personal connections with text, to encourage visualizing as reading, to stimulate developing questions (i.e. I wonder...?) while reading, and to summarize in the process of reading. The ELL teacher points out unusual/unfamiliar words contained within the text to prepare students for the actual reading process;
- Actual reading: Students are asked by the teacher to provide their own personal input during the actual reading of the text (i.e. What is the song "Las Mananitas"? How does it go? Will you both sing it together for us?). Students explain what the text is about and provide the teacher with their own cultural perspective on the "Happy Birthday" song. Students/teacher also point out specific vocabulary words during reading to provide further interaction and engagement with the text. The teacher also projects a page of the reading using an overhead projector to give students a visual aid while discussing phrases/vocabulary for better understanding;
- Post-reading: The ELL teacher has students make 3 post-it notes with questions, inferences, background knowledge, etc., for the post-it board. Students continue developing their personal connections to the text in this manner.
Another aspect of our teacher's strategies include having students prepare any "I'm confused..." questions at home the previous night while doing a preview of the coming material. For example, a student who hasn't experienced an earthquake might write a question asking what an earthquake is, or what it feels like. Another technique used by the teacher includes modeling how to read a book, verbally stating how to visualize text, as well as how to make self-to-text connections while reading. This is extremely helpful and students are well engaged in the classroom conversation.
Melinda,
ReplyDeleteYou did a wonderful job of restating several of the activities utilized in this classroom. I agree that the "I Wonder" post-it activity was great for discovering what the students don't know. How do you know your students haven't experienced an earthquake unless you give them the opportunity to say so. In looking at the topic of activating background knowledge, I found the following article http://iteslj.org/Articles/Stott-Schema.html. I found it interesting that this author made mention of the fact that the very activities we've witnessed and discussed may not work as intended. Responding to his thoughts what do you think on this?
Karyn
Melinda,
ReplyDeleteI also liked the observed teacher’s application of reading strategies via post-it notes. In her book, Do I Really Have to Teach Reading, Tovani (2004) discussed the use of post-it notes as a way to record thinking so it can be referenced later. Both the instructor and Tovani are secondary teachers, but we use this strategy beginning in third grade at our school. It gives every student the opportunity to demonstrate their thinking and respond to the text in a less intimidating manner than sharing aloud. It also ensures that all students are participants – they can’t depend on anyone else to do the thinking for them because they are accountable for their own responses.
Regarding the link Karyn posted, I appreciated the author’s mentioning that vocabulary must be experienced in numerous contexts for it to be learned and that extensive reading and exposure to texts is therefore even more valuable for our ELLs than for our native English speakers. I find that when students are simply taught the words and definitions, they retain the information only long enough to pass the weekly assessment. However, when used in multiple contexts, for example as part of thematic units, the words become engrained in their vocabulary.
In researching “extensive reading” this week for both this class and an ongoing discussion with my school’s ELA instructor, I came repeatedly across the findings of R. Day and J. Bamford. The best summary of their research I found was in the article at this link: http://www.nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/October2002/day/day.html. In this article, they outlined the conditions under which extensive reading is most beneficial and the skills/strategies that need to accompany student-selected reading materials.
Thanks!
-Rebekah
Reference:
Tovani, Cris. (2004). Do I really have to teach reading. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse.