Children's Books- Increasing ELL Schema

While reading books to/with ELL students, it is crucial for the teacher to determine what components of the book might affect comprehension because of cultural aspects and also to find ways to introduce or teach this schema to the ELL students to increase their understanding. Below I have identified possible challenges for ELL students while reading two books, Snowmen at Night and Martin's Big Words, and also ways to increase schema and understanding with each book.

Snowmen at Night, by Caralyn Buehner

Snowmen at Night details a boy’s theory of why his snowman looks different from one day to the next. He shares the activities the snowmen might be doing at night when they come alive and meet up with their friends, including drinking cocoa, play baseball and having snowman races.  The following factors may influence student comprehension of the story…

1)      Depending on where the students are from and where they have traveled in the world, they may have little or no experience with snow or snowmen.

2)      There may be unfamiliar vocabulary in Snowmen at Night, such as “cocoa,” “anxious,” and “sledding.”

3)      Understanding the humor in the story, like when the snowmen drink “ice-cold cocoa.”

4)      Students may not comprehend that the entire story is a boy’s theory of what happened to his snowmen, as a theory is very abstract idea to comprehend.

To increase student understanding, the teacher could have students share what they know about snow and what questions they have about snow with their peers. Engaging in a discussion would give students familiar with snow the opportunity to share their knowledge with students who are unfamiliar with snow.  The teacher may also consider using gestures to model how people can roll snow into giant snowballs and then stack them to create a snowman. This nonlinguistic representation may help students to better understand what a snowman is and how snowmen are made. The teacher could also preview the vocabulary with the students using pictures of each of the words that will be found in the story. When the teacher reads the word that was previewed in context, he/she could emphasize the word and check for understanding of the meaning of the word again.

Martin’s Big Words, by Dorreen Rappaport

This book is a narrative story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s influential life. It details his experiences as a child and the many ways that he changed America, and the world, forever for the better.  Martin’s Big Words also has phenomenal illustrations that will appeal to ELL students (and all other readers) by acclaimed illustrator Bryan Collier. Some challenges that English Language Learners may have comprehending this story are detailed below.

1)      Figurative Language, like “his big words are alive for us today,” can be confusing and difficult for ELL students to understand.

2)      Students who are not from the United States may not have background knowledge on the slavery, segregation and eventually the Civil Rights Movement that occurred in the U.S.

3)      Unknown vocabulary, like arrest, freedom, hate or jailed, could limit comprehension.

4)      Students may find making the connections between Martin Luther King Jr. and other historical figures in the story, like Rosa Parks.

To increase student schema, the teacher may consider doing a vocabulary activity prior to reading the book. Students could illustrate key vocabulary words with teacher guidance and then practice explaining their illustrations to their peers verbally.  The teacher could also have pages of the book marked, that show “Whites Only” signs and other images of segregation to pre-teach these key concepts prior to reading. When a key concept like segregation is taught in advance, the teacher can refer to the concept and prior discussion throughout the book to increase student understanding.

My Own ELL Experience

I attempted to read a French newspaper article, a reading level of at which I should be proficient in a language that I have little experience with.  The article was from a leading French daily newspaper, Le Monde, and the title of the article was “Des attentats à la marche républicaine, cinq jours en France” (Des attentats, 2015). As I attempted to comprehend this publication, I used several strategies that ELL students may also use to derive meaning as they are learning a language.

·         I looked at the picture for context clues. There was a picture accompanying the article of a crowd with a sign that read, “We are not afraid.” From this I infered that this article was about the recent acts of terror in France. I then knew what sort of vocabulary may be in the article and could approach reading it with a frame of reference.

·         I looked for words that were similar to other words I know in English and in Spanish. Taking Spanish in high school left me with knowledge of basic vocabulary. As in Spanish, I noticed that French used the pronouns, la, de and les. When I saw these words, I knew that a noun likely followed. Words like terroristes, victims and chronologie are similar to the English words terrorists, victims, and chronology. However, this strategy also backfired with words like attentats, which to me looked like the English word attendants and actually means “attacks.”

·         I used background knowledge on the current events in France that I have heard in English on the news. I had heard of Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine, so I was able to use my prior knowledge as a starting point when beginning to interpret the text.

Despite my efforts to make meaning of the article, I found that I was only able to understand the generic topic featured in this article. I found myself feeling excited even when I found one word that I knew (or thought that I knew), however I knew that I was not understanding this French text at a proficient level. As an ELL student in this situation, I would have appreciated words of encouragement and guidance/scaffolding from someone fluent in French. From this I learned to celebrate the little victories with ELL students, because many little victories will eventually lead to fluency in English!

http://www.thefrenchexperiment.com/stories/goldilocks/

After struggling to comprehend an adult publication, I ended up looking up words and phrases on Google Translator to better understand what I was reading. Then, I scaled back the level of reading to a familiar Fairy Tale, “Boucles d’or et les Trois Ours” (Goldilocks and the Three Bears). I had a similar experience as the news article, where I recognized words here and there, but this time the familiar story pattern helped me to infer additional words. I scaled back the level even further to very basic words with pictures...I am not even ready for sentences in French. This met my needs as a beginning French reader/speaker. The pictures helped me to match meaning with new vocabulary words, and there were audio clips that featured a fluent French speaker pronouncing the words. This modeling was completely helpful as some of the words were pronounced differently than I had expected. 

As an ELL instructor, I must keep in mind that third grade ELL students may not be reading anywhere near a third grade level. I as an adult may read at a kindergarten or first grade level in French! Yikes!  It is also important for ELL instructors to also challenge students with developmentally appropriate and challenging thinking while providing basic, fundamental reading/speaking instruction. This may be a challenging task to do both, but it must be done to meet the needs of ELL students.

 

Resources:

“Des attentats à la marche républicaine, cinq jours en France.” LeMonde.FR. Retrieved on 01/13/2015 from http://www.lemonde.fr/

Oral Language and the Reading Process

Learning to speak a language orally is similar in many ways to the reading process for English Language Learners.

-Pauline Gibbons (2002) suggests that, “it is often at moments of struggle that real steps in learning are achieved. This is true of speaking a language orally and the reading process. Moments of struggle encourage the reader or speaker to find a remedy or a solution for the struggle, which can often be useful in future situations as well.

-Both oral language learning and the reading process for ELLs require immediate and specific feedback from a knowledgeable speaker/reader. When learning to speak a language the speaker must speak and then gain insight as to whether or not their intended message was communicated clearly. If it was not communicated clearly, the ELL student needs specific feedback for how they could clarify. For emergent reader ELL students, the readers must attempt to decode or use other clues to identify a word, before receiving feedback and support from a knowledgeable reader.

-Group work is useful for oral language development for English Language Learners and for the reading process as well. Students can view their peers as model readers and thinkers, expanding their thinking processes and their vocabularies. Students may hear a peer say something, or phrase something a certain way that they want to try as well. Students may also perform at higher levels when around their peers to try to keep up with and even show off a little for their friends.

-Context in important for both oral language and for the reading process. Oral comprehension is increased when “language is used in an appropriate context and used meaningfully for a particular purpose” (Gibbons, 2002). ELL students may also use nonverbal context clues to help decipher meaning, such the location of the conversation, the speaker or gestures. While reading, ELL students may use context clues such as surrounding words in a book or picture clues to help determine the meaning of unknown vocabulary words.

 

References:

Gibbons, Pauline (2002). Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Publishing.

Writing Instruction I Recieved As a Child

 

I loved to write from the very beginning. In elementary school, I loved to write stories and I liked to “play” with my handwriting, changing my penmanship from fancy or serious, bubble letters to cursive. In third grade, I remember a writer’s workshop time that I just could not get enough of. My teacher would let us sit under the desks (COOL!) and use clip boards (EVEN COOLER!).  We conferenced with the teacher and we conferenced with our peers, a task we took very seriously.  Two of my most memorable stories that emerged from this year were “The Great Ravioli” which told of a cheese ravioli who came to life and joined the circus, and “Eggbert: The True story of an Egg Shaped Kickball.” The second one is pretty self-explanatory. I suppose that inanimate objects coming to life was my signature as a third grade author.

The more I think about my experience, the more I realize that most of my memories are of me writing and drawing and creating, not of my teacher teaching me to do those things. This makes me think that my teachers took more of a “progressive” approach to teaching me to write, putting me “at the center of the educational process” (Gibbons, 2002). This “progressive” approach was very active and I feel that my teachers consciously built upon my prior experiences and knowledge by staging appropriate learning experiences that would encourage progress for me as a writer.

 

 

References:

 

Gibbons, Pauline (2002). Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Publishing.

Philosophies for Teaching English Language Learners

After school one day, I sat down with the reading specialist from my school to chat about our philosophies on teaching ELL students. We began by discussing the student population at the school where we teach, which is diverse socioeconomically, but not diverse racially or linguistically. Our school is 99% African American and we literally do not have a single ELL student in the building. There are many students in the area that speak multiple languages though, as there is a large Naval presence in Norfolk and many families have lived in places other than the US.

 

We talked about how teaching students of different cultures who spoke different languages could be especially challenging if we were unfamiliar with the cultures of the students or didn’t speak their languages. For instance, I know relatively little about French culture and the only French I know is, “un, deux, trois,” which would only get me so far when trying to teach an ELL student.  Not knowing the customs or socially acceptable ways to communicate could pose challenges and disconnect between the teacher and the student making it extremely important for the teacher to put in the effort to better understand the student’s background and culture. The teacher needs to be committed to researching the culture in depth and even finding someone who speaks English fluently from that culture that could help explain the cultural cues and socially acceptable practices, like how to order a meal, how to show respect for elders or how to write a business letter. Ignoring cultural differences will likely be frustrating for the teacher and also for the student as they may feel like their teacher, “doesn’t get them,” or like their teacher is on a completely different page than their parents or others in their home.

We also discussed how when teaching ELL the types of assignments should be as interactive and engaging as possible, just as they should be while teaching students who are not learning a new language. Students need to have opportunities to speak with their teacher, English speaking students and fellow ELL students. Dialogue gives the student practice hearing and responding to verbal words just as they will do in the classroom and in the real world and also to receive immediate assistance and constructive feedback. This led our conversation to the importance of creating a classroom environment for English Language Learners. These students must feel comfortable taking risks and trying new words and phrases with their peers as they are learning a new language, which at times could feel like a daunting task.  The classroom environment must be supportive, positive and productive where students can gain confidence that they will find success.

My Blog Creation

After spending countless hours perusing fun teacher blogs like The First Grade Parade, Kindergarten Smiles and KindergartenKindergarten, I have been finding myself wanting to start a blog of my own lately. So having a mandatory blog assigned for a class I am taking (EDRG 604-Literacy for the Diverse Learner at Regis University) was the final little push I needed to get a blog up and running. So here it is! My hopes for this blog are to have a place to share ideas and experiences from my own kindergarten classroom, pose questions to other teachers and, of course, to share my work from EDRG 604.

As a first time blogger, I was sort of anticipating cruising into the blog generating site and creating a beautiful and functional outlet for my educational thoughts rather quickly. Much to my surprise, I was stalled for quite a while on the first, very basics of my blog: name and web address. There are SO many amazing blogs out there with adorable names (ie. An Apple For the Teacher, The First Grade Parade...etc.), and I assumed mine would have a fun name as well. Much to my dismay, my creative juices were not flowing and even after searching the web for adjectives with the same initial letters as my name, my blog is still just titled "Haley Keeling"...for now.  I am still hopeful that a clever, unique name will just pop into my head someday. 

I already am enjoying the style of writing that blogging allows. It feels very free flowing and natural for me. The logistics of making a post seemed fairly straight forward so far, however I haven't attempted to add any pictures, links or do anything to technical yet. As I move forward with my blog, I think I will keep in mind that this is day one of having a blog, and it is unreasonable at this point for me to expect my blog to look like the expert bloggers out there. Kuddos to those ladies and gentlemen though for making it look so easy! That level of blogging will be something to aspire to.

-HK