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Ingrid HeidrickKeymaster
Is it possible to talk to your AP about modifying the workshop model to for ELLs to include longer Guided Reading?
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterYes! Close Reading is so complex. It needs to be a safe space for students to practice building identities as readers. I haven’t addressed this as much as I would like in the lectures, but building their identities as readers means giving them that familiarity, that repeated exposure to text, in order that they gain a comfort level with being curious and asking questions, as well as knowing what to do if they don’t understand. It’s about fostering a love of reading and getting them engaged through captivating stories and books. The NUMBER ONE predictor of successful literacy acquisition is ENGAGEMENT. For our emergent bilinguals, it’s also crucial to include not just the critical thinking piece of Close Reading, but the linguistic piece as well.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterRocio, from your comments it seems to me that you are a wonderful teacher and I wish all of our emergent bilinguals could have teachers like you. Your comments express a lot of empathy for your students, as well as respect for their learning needs. Yes, Close Reading must be a SAFE environment for students to explore, make mistakes, and practice reading comprehension out loud without feeling embarrassed or afraid.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterThe good news, Terlyn, is that it is never too late to learn. No matter what your educational background, you can always challenge yourself and strive to learn more. I have my PhD and I am STILL learning every day! You can’t go back in time but you are with each day educating yourself more and more about your teaching practice and your students, about their language and literacy needs, and how to help them. Be proud of yourself! I absolutely agree that critical thinking can happen at any age, and there should be a continuous process of fostering critical thinking from the early years through college.
August 9, 2018 at 6:59 pm in reply to: Is your reading instruction preventive, augmentative, or remedial? #551Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterRocio, I would definitely suggest – if you haven’t already done this – to implement Centers in your classroom. Then, you can create a Center for independent reading for your more advanced group, as well as other more challenging activities for them.
August 9, 2018 at 6:56 pm in reply to: Is your reading instruction preventive, augmentative, or remedial? #550Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterAngela,
That will be a big change for you next year. I would DEFINITELY talk to your principal about differentiating the workshop model for ELLs. I’m sorry but the TC curriculum is not appropriate for ELLs – in fact, it’s detrimental. In your position I would talk to her about not necessarily changing the learning objectives of the unit, but about pacing it differently. Can you devote more time to oral language scaffolding, then transition into short mini lessons? I hope she is supportive. Tell her that you really need to focus on schema building, phonics and decoding and that requires more time. We talk about Centers in Week 4 and I hope you can get some ideas about how to implement them in your classroom. Guided Reading every day would be wonderful! But the other kids need to be trained in what they have to do while you are working with your group.
August 9, 2018 at 6:49 pm in reply to: Is your reading instruction preventive, augmentative, or remedial? #549Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterYes! I had not even thought of texts that are about art history and famous artists! That is a fantastic and enriching edition to the classroom!
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterYes! Older students are often the ones who need Read Alouds and choral reading THE MOST. These are the students who often get neglected and ‘swept away’ in the system. Experiment in your upcoming academic year, collaborate with your students’ other teachers, see what works. You may also ask your students’ classroom teachers to share their reading levels with you, that way you have more of an idea what will benefit them in your classroom.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterRocio, I love the idea of role-play. Actually, I believe it is a critically effective technique for comprehension. Yes, everything you mention is what our kids go through – coming to completely false conclusions in the text, being disengaged because of content/linguistic overload, feeling embarrassed/silly because they couldn’t understand.
Multisensory cues are the key, I believe. They have to see it, say it, hear it, and do it to start achieving comprehension, vocabulary, and literacy.
August 1, 2018 at 10:58 am in reply to: How do YOU teach oral language and academic vocabulary? #518Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterThe comments show that teaching academic language is NOT easy. What strikes me the most from the comments is that they show that teaching academic language is not just about specific vocbulary – academic language needs to support academic THINKING. And that is how we begin to build up our kids’ identities as learners.
August 1, 2018 at 10:54 am in reply to: How do YOU teach oral language and academic vocabulary? #517Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterRocio, I wish every emergent bilingual had a bilingual teacher, who can move fluidly across the two languages. You are doing your students a great service by teaching them phonemic awareness in Spanish. Yes, they are transferring their skills to English because that’s what bilinguals do. Use their entire linguistic repertoire to advance content and literacy. Research shows time and again that the most effective reading interventions are ones that teach biliteracy.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterI see that overall, you think using a template is a valuable tool for planning instruction. I’ve made my particular template very detailed because I want you to work hard at thinking critically about certain aspects of your instruction. My ultimate goal for you is to get away from planning lesson-to-lesson and move onto planning unit-to-unit. Teachers are given almost no time on the job to think about the ‘larger picture’. The larger picture here is 1. How will I scaffold comprehension of the material? and 2. How will I target vocabulary specifically? (and as we move one 3. How will I target literacy specifically?)
But the template will ultimately be about you and your teaching practice. Mold it to what works for you – but in order to move our emergent bilinguals forward academically, we need to have a plan for those specific 3 things: comprehension, vocabulary, literacy.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterFrom our comments, I see that ‘talking academically’ has a lot to do with comprehending the content. If we don’t spend time building up comprehension, how can students begin to think and talk critically about the content? It’s here that we can give them the ‘tools’ they need – the specific vocabulary, or sentence starters/frames, and especially MODELING that they need to begin to do this.
Questions that can be a part of the classroom routines:
What do you see? What do you notice? What do you think about this?
I see, I notice that, I think that, I believe, I agree/disagree, etc.Can our students practice how to have these exchanges with each other during the activities?
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterYes, I completely agree. ‘We’ (in general as a society) underestimate out emergent bilinguals’ abilities and in many cases, have given up on them. You correctly point out that emergent bilinguals need lots of modeling of foundational skills in the older grades. They also need structured activities that allow them to engage in academic conversations, not just ‘talk’. And most importantly, you talk about building up their confidence. This is something I haven’t addressed specifically, but yes, the question is, how can we build up their confidence and identity as learners/readers? One way is to make sure they are comprehending the material. Once they comprehend what is going on, then they can begin to think – and talk – critically about the material.
Ingrid HeidrickKeymasterThis is going to be a challenging experiment but hopefully a rewarding one. You don’t have to introduce every chapter with visuals. You could introduce visuals during the pre-reading phase (remember you need to prepare your students before they start reading). You could also introduce short video clips (either from the animated film or focused on friendship, love, etc.) Students could connect the text back to their personal lives: Who is your best friend? Why are they your best friend? What does friendship mean to you? They could do this orally, in writing, making a collage using pictures you have selected. This is all before reading. You have to decide how much time you can spend on this.
Then, when you begin the book with them, you don’t have to ‘repeat’ the same process for every chapter, because you’ve already given them a foundation for comprehension. You can read aloud to them, have them do art activities that focus on comprehension and reaction to the text, etc. 27 chapters is a lot of chapters. Depending on their proficiency levels in English, you may not be able to do every chapter in class. Decide whether you can summarize some chapters for them and just focus on the most important ones.
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