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To get started, watch this brief video about Dr. Margarita Calderon as she outlines techniques for elementary teachers seeking to improve the reading and comprehension skills of English Learners in their classrooms. Dr. Calderon leads workshop participants through the steps needed to select vocabulary for reading, pre-teach this vocabulary, and model comprehension strategies like think-aloud and partner reading.
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English Language Learners and the Five Essential Components of Reading Instruction _ Reading Rockets.pdfRead through this brief Reading Rockets Article on English Learners and the Five Essential Components of Reading Instruction.
What surprised you?
What information was familiar?
What were your takeaways?
How might being an English Learner affect a student's experience in the classroom?
As a teacher, how might you support a student who is an English Learner?
Reading in the Content Areas
The National Reading Panel has identified five components for all students, including ELs, to become good readers: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.
Explicit strategy instruction is very important for ELs. For beginning ELs, start by asking and answering questions, determining important information, summarizing, making connections, and monitoring comprehension.
*A word of caution: ELs cannot be expected to make predictions or inferences if they don’t know the words to understand or to express that prediction or inference. They may also have difficulty making connections to certain prior knowledge that is not part of their culture or schooling experiences.
Effective Literacy Teaching
Teach vocabulary and grammar in the context of what students are about to read. Select words to teach according to their language and reading levels.
Introduce ELs to basic reading strategies that support comprehension. Model these strategies through read-alouds and think-alouds, and apply the various strategies using the scaffolds below.
Use prompts and cooperative learning activities to help practice effective communication and monitor their progress. Monitor students as they read, recording their use of strategies as they alternate reading with their partner.
Use your students’ strengths, interests, and experiences to help them succeed. Give opportunities for inquiry and creativity as they become more independent, apply rigor in their learning, and do more self-monitoring.
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ELL Supports for Writing and Discussion.pdfScaffolds
As teachers, we often use sentence and question starters to provide important scaffolds for ELs—to help with writing and classroom discussions. Sentence starters can reduce student stress levels, allow students to focus on the key parts of a lesson, and help introduce academic vocabulary. We also use writing frames, which are templates that include sentence starters, connecting words and an overall structure that provides extensive scaffolding to a student responding to a question or prompt. One caveat to note: starters and frames are most helpful to students with little to no English language skills, and relying on them too much may actually hinder learning. You should use the Gradual Release of Responsibility to help students learn to do this on their own.
American Federation of Teachers. 555 New Jersey Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20001. Tel: 202-879-4400; e-mail: amered@aft.org; Web site: http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae
Partner Reading
After you model with students, practice is very important! Partner reading and summarizing is critically important for ELs while reading in math, science, and social studies.
Ten minutes of daily partner reading reinforces the knowledge of the strategy and helps students understand and learn the content areas.
The most effective partner reading approaches include:
Alternate reading sentences aloud with a partner
The first student reads a sentence and does a think-aloud, followed by the second student who reads the next sentence and does a think-aloud
Pair alternate reading each sentence aloud (without the think-aloud), followed by both pairs talking about what they read after each paragraph.
Once you have completed each section of this mini-course, fill out the Google Form below in order to receive your CEU credit. Thank you!
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