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Ingrid HeidrickKeymaster
How wonderful that you give explicit spelling instruction – I would highly encourage you to always try and use (when possible) content vocabulary so that your students are not only learning spelling, but practicing vocabulary at the same time!
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterYes – the scope and sequence is Orton Gillingham-based, which Fundations is as well. And you bring up an important point: this scope and sequence is flexible, depending on your students’ needs. Although Orton Gillingham was designed for a one on one teaching situation, the scope and sequence can be used as a differentiation tool for students grouped together at different levels. So glad you’re going to incorporate the animal names! It’s a fun way for students to remember important decoding strategies.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterYes, of course. It was an exercise to emphasize how when you do read out loud to students, they have ore ability to take in vocabulary and try to build schema, rather than getting lost in trying to read the text on their own. Not all students are beginners, so those with more oral language ability will benefit even more.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterIt’s really tough on teachers when they have so many levels in their classroom, but it sounds like you are doing a wonderful job. You can group fluent readers with beginning readers to discuss big picture ideas about a text, and to have the fluent readers read the text to the beginners in small groups. They can analyze vocabulary, discuss questions, etc. Then, you can work with the beginners on phonics in a group, while the fluent readers do something else (writing, text analysis, etc.)
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterIt’s great that you’ve naturally been doing this. Also, supporting them with home language articles has been shown by research to benefit reading comprehension in English. Keep up the good work!
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterI sent you the link to the video over email so I hope you’ve been able to access it. The purpose of the German lesson is to put teachers for a brief moment into the shoes of ELLs, many of whom are struggling for basic comprehension and yet are required to learn complex content that is way over their language and literacy levels. It’s frustrating and humiliating to be in this situation day in and day out and be given no time whatsoever to catch up academically. What can we do for our students? While it would take broad, institutional-level change to give ELLs more time to acquire language and literacy, we can implement culturally responsive and evidence-based instruction. When students are given access to content through oral language first, and given the time to practice foundational skills like decoding, they can succeed.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterHi Deonna,
Welcome! Wow. You are the first participant I’ve had that teaches in a correctional facility. Your student population is one that I know nothing about and I am really looking forward to hearing your viewpoints in the coming weeks. As I discuss in Part 1 of the lecture, the graduation rate for ELLs in NY State is 29%. The rest are either taking longer to graduate, or drop out. Research shows that dropping out of school and having a learning disability like dyslexia puts you at a disproportionate risk of going to jail. I wonder what the school experiences of your students were. I’m excited to be able to share my knowledge with you, for you to then be able to practice applying it in this special setting. I firmly believe that the life of a student can change with literacy and highly trained teachers.
In terms of technology, of course it’s great to have. But nothing can replace good pedagogy, even if it’s just pencil and paper. For visuals, I would recommend printing out pictures that are big enough to see in the front of the class, or in a group. Of course it requires printing expense and extra work on the part of the teacher, so hopefully you have access to a printer? Most of the strategies and actvities we’re going to do in the course don’t require technology, so I hope that’s helpful to you.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterWelcome Paule! Happy to meet you. The second grade is a critical year for students because it’s really the last year they have to focus on foundational skills like phonics. I think you bring up an important point: you had a goal for where you wanted to get your students, but couldn’t quite reach it (congratulations for getting them close though!). We need to think about what is realistic for students at different levels of language and literacy ability. This is tricky because you are under pressure to get them to a certain level by the end of the year. But what if you have a class of newcomers? Or the majority of your students are ELLs, as you mentioned? I hope with the strategies and activities we do together in the course, I can give you more ideas about the kinds of support your students need and how to get them speaking, reading and writing.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterWow, Frannilba! You can give us all a lesson in differentiation and scaffolding!!
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterGuided Reading is one of the most important aspects of teaching students to read – unfortunately, so many times the classroom situation doesn’t allow for it to happen. I think it’s more important, however, to teach whole class phonics and bring in phonology, morphology, punctuation, and grammar into Close Reading and have kids work in partners to practice than to have a small group of same level readers. So, if you can’t do Guided Reading, you can’t do it – but you can target foundational language and literacy skills in other ways!
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterFrannilba, you also have had such rich experiences as a language learner and have so much to offer your students. Your teacher was right – you needed MORE TIME to acquire English before trying to graduate and go to college. Because you gave yourself this time, you have a solid foundation now. Acquiring a new language is hard and scary sometimes. I’m glad you were able to take time to build up yourknowledge.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterRoxanna, you’ve obviously had a lot of rich experiences as a language learner. I understand why your professor thought you should focus on writing, but at the same time – it’s never too late to learn! Writing is one of the HARDEST, if not THE hardest aspect of language to acquire. Because of your experience, and because you made such an effort with grammar, you have a lot of teach your students. I highly recommend The Writing Revolution by Judith Hochman as a source for activities.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterI’m glad you found the activities useful Roxanna! I absolutely encourage using Spanish with these activities for your Spanish-English bilinguals – the more cross-linguistic connections they can make, the better!!
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterWow Roxanna, it sounds like you have a big challenge ahead of you. With such a large group of emergent readers (even though they are only in the 1st grade), I would highly suggest integrating foundational language and literacy skills into your instruction. We can talk more about this in detail if you wish, but I’m thinking of remedial instruction like teaching the alphabet, beginning phonics, multisensory techniques, handwriting practice, etc.
Do you have access to audio books, so you can set up stations for the other kids who are reading more, and have them do more advanced work while you are doing your Guided Reading with the lowest group?
October 15, 2018 at 10:55 am in reply to: How did it FEEL not to be able to understand the German text? #858Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterIt’s not easy learning when you don’t have access to the language. As fluent readers, you implemented some unconcious strategies: figuring out what you already know about water, skimming the text, looking for familiar words, trying to sound out the words as you were reading.
Our ELLs and other students need to have these techniques explicitly modeled for them, and they need a chance to practice using them. As teachers, we have to EXTERNALIZE the INTERNAL fleunt reading processes we use!
The need to scaffold visually is critical for ELLs and any student with a disability. It really needs to become the core of any ENL teacher’s technique, even when you advance to reading and writing.
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