Supporting Academic Reading

Gibbons moves onto strategies to deal with Before, During, and After-Reading Activities to promote understanding for ELLs.

Before-Reading Activities prepares students to read the text: (p. 88-92)

• Prediction from Pictures, Diagrams, or Other Visuals
• Prediction from Key Words, the Title, or the First Sentence
•  Personal Narratives
• Semantic Web
• Reader Questions
• Sequencing Illustrations
• Skeleton Text
• Previewing the Text

During-Reading Activities helps the students "focus" their attention on the text: (p. 93-99)

• Scanning for Information
• Pause and Predict
• Margin Questions
• Scaffolding a Detailed Reading
• Identifying Paragraph Parts
• Read Critically by questioning the text and analyzing language

After -Reading Activities will help the students understand the text deeper; (p. 100-104)

• True/False Statements
• Graphic Outlines
• Summarizing the Text
• Cloze Activities
• Sentence Reconstruction
• Jumbled  words
• Innovating on the Text
• Cartoon/ Cartoon Strips
• Reader's Theatre

These are just some strategies to help ELLs to understand, interact, and comprehend complex text. After reading this section of the book, I come to realize that there are strategies that I need to try to help my students. 
The next chapter focuses on Writing and I can't wait because I have a difficult time teaching writing. 

Chapter Five

Building Bridges to Text

This chapter is about reading activities that teachers can use to teach reading to ELLs.

3 Types of activites:

•  Traditional/ Bottom-up Approach - This approach is phonics based and it is mostly decoding and segmenting words but does not concentrate on meaning of the text. Students learn to read by using individual sounds and letters to make simple words and move onto reading simple sentences. However, ELL are unfamiliar with the sounds of letters because the sounds do not match their first language.
• Whole Language/ Top Down Approach - "Reading for Meaning"     Fluent readers use different knowledges to get the meaning of a text.                                      Semantic Knowledge - knowledge about the world around them                    Syntactic Knowledge - knowledge about the structure of the English                    language                                                                                                      Graphophonic Knowledge - Knowledge of sound and letter                                 recognition

• Critical and Social Approach - Students need to critique and question text depending on their experiences and events. Interaction with reading depends on the students' experiences and knowledge. 

Teachers need to figure out what works for her students and try a variety of strategies to teach ELLs to read and comprehend. Once the students become fluent readers they will need to take on the 4 roles:

1. Reader as a code breaker
2. Reader as a text participant
3. Reader as a text user
4. Reader as text analyst 

One thing that Gibbons focuses on is call "nominalization". "This is the process of changing verbs into nouns" (Gibbons 2009), for example, destroy becomes destruction, pollute become pollution and extinct becomes extinction. Students will use only simple words and teachers need to teach students to nominalize when writing.  Many people do not learn to use nominalization and so our writing seems "wordy" or "less sophisticated". However, using examples of nominalization will reinforce usage but students will not learn to get the gist of it until 12 or 13 years of age.

Now back to Gibbon's strategies she suggested to use when teaching ELLs so they are exposed to different use of language:

• Progressive Brainstorm - Students share what they know in small groups and write them on paper with one color. Then students switch to another group and add their ideas with another color. The group continues to switch until they get back to their own paper. Once the students get back the whole class discuss or share their findings.
• Wallpapering - In small groups, students write one thing that is "controversial" on paper and putting it on wall. Students do a gallery walk and comment on three items as a whole group.
• Semantic Web/ Concept Web- Collecting, recording and organizing information on paper as a whole group about the topic.
• Dictogloss - This gives students an opportunity to listen, talk, read, write, make notes, reflect on language use, clarify content, and use academic language. The teacher reads text twice while students listen. The third time the teacher reads, students write down "key points"and share with a partner. Next the students are in groups of four and write the entire text on a large paper. Text does not have to be exactly the same but should have the same meaning. Discuss as a whole group about differences for the texts.  
• Joint Construction - Teacher use this to teach writing as a whole group. Teacher gives feedback so that the sentences make sense or helping students create academic language.
• The Last Word - This is a small group work on a sentence that the students think is important in a text. In small groups, one student reads his or her sentence but does not discuss it with others. The other group members begin their comment one at a time. The next student comments for about one minute without interruption. It continues until all three make a comment then it comes back to the first student and he or she comments on the sentence he or she selected. Then the next round will start and continues until everyone in the group reads their specific sentences. 
• Thinking Sheets - Students are given a thinking sheet to work out a problem as a whole group and the talking is done through thinking aloud. Once the problem is solved as a group, it will be presented to the teacher. The teacher will ask questions and use academic language to get the students practice. 
• Split Dictation -Two versions of a text is used but with different omissions for discussion. Text should be from the lesson being used. The text will have certain parts missing and the students have to find the person who has the other half of the sentence. Discussion takes place to see if the two parts go together. 
• Barrier Crossword - Students work in pairs on crossword puzzle when the words are provided but the students have to provide the clues for the words.This is useful for vocabulary words in the lessons.
• Traditional and Specific Cloze Exercises - Text is used with some words deleted and the students will fit in words. This can be used if different ways according to teacher discretions. 
• Total Cloze - The title is the only word provided and the rest of the text is replaced with a gap representing each word. this is used at the end of the unit. The teacher writes the title, gaps and punctuation on the board and write the paragraph as a whole group. teachers need to make sure to use academic language to reinforce language.  
• Vanishing Cloze - Write a sentence on the board and start erasing a word from the sentence and students read sentence. Continue the process and erase different words and students read.  
• Word Walls - Use a bank of words on the wall for student reference
• Sentence Matching - Matching the sentences that mean the same thing but using everyday and academic language. Use one column with everyday language in a sentence and the other column use academic language and have students match them. Discuss as a whole group 
• Bilingual Dictionaries - use new words in their language

This is a long list but they are great ideas to try with our students. 

Strategies

"What is important is that the task and the classroom grouping are the most effective for the particular teaching focus at that point." (Gibbons p.59)

At this point the book gives some strategies to use to work with ELLs when teaching in a content area.

Planning lessons, use of materials and classroom organization are important for ELLs.  According to Gibbons, students learn best in a mixture of whole group work, small group work, paired work, and individual work so that the students are collaborating to understand text.

The first strategy is to find out the background knowledge of all the students when introducing lessons.  It says to be open about the subject being studied and let the students use their first language to tell their "personal narratives".  While the students tell their narratives, the teacher should be doing a K-W-L chart and writing down vocabulary associated with the subject.

Next is to move toward the complex text slowly by a class discussion that includes visual aids, diagrams, graphs, vocabulary words and concrete objects.  By discussing the topic before getting to the complex text, students will have some prior knowledge and be able to tackle the text on their own.

ELLs need a lot of modeling and the teacher should be able to model the use of academic language. As teachers, we need to be aware of our language that we use in the classroom.  Students should be able to use academic language in the classrooms and use other languages with family and friends - Discourse as discussed with our readings.

The next step is the teach students about grammar using the text so they become familiar with the language. She says to follow the text being used until they understand the concept.

What is "Literacy"?

Sixty years ago it was defined as "reading means getting meaning from certain combinations of letters. Teach the child what each letter stands for and he can read. Phonics is taught to the child letter by letter and sound by sound until he knows it- and when he knows it he knows how to read" (Farr and Roser 1979, 13,referring to a definition of literacy)

If this was the case, it sure would be easy to teach children how to read by teaching them the letters and the sounds they make.  The definition is only referred to reading at the time and it has nothing to do with comprehension.  So as teachers, we have to do our best to help the student "learn to read" then transition them to "read to learn".  Comprehension is hard and complicated for ELLs becasuse they must learn the academic language first before anything else can be done with literacy.

Today literacy involves reading, speaking, and writing. It does not involve only learning phonics and segmenting but it involves understanding all text from all subjects.

We experienced the same thing that ELLs deal with on a daily basis.  We have read three articles and I for one did not understand it the first and even the second time I read them.  We found that the text were difficult and the reason is that we are not familiar with the "reading and writing in this field".  Our textbooks in the classroom are unfamiliar to our students especially ELLs.  So our students need to do what we did - "literate talk".  Have the students talk or have discussions to understand the text being used in the classroom.  We need to give our students "opportunities to read, reason, investigate, speak, and write about the overarching concepts within that discipline."

Contextual Factors need to be used for ELLs:

• Field - topic of the text
• Tenor - the relationship between speaker and listener or writer and reader
• Mode - the channel of communication, whether it is spoken or written

Students will learn to use different kinds of languages to become literate in different subjects by using prior knowledge and scaffolding.  

I am reading " English Learners Academic Literacy and Thinking: Learning in the Challenge Zone" by Pauline Gibbons.  I am teaching second language learners and I wanted to read a book about English language learners (ELL).  The "Challenge Zone", come to find out is middle school and it emphasizes students who are having difficulty with learning English and making sense of language all together. This book suggests strategies to raise expectations of teachers and students in the regular and EL classrooms.  ELL students should be in high-challenge classrooms to be successful in their education.
First, students who are cognitively challenged no matter the background, are engaged in their classwork; second, students, no matter what background they come from achieve at higher levels when they are in "an intellectually challenging curriculum; third, "equity gaps" are diminished when they are engaged in their work. From the reading, I am understanding that all students are capable of being successful in academics, but there are factors that determine who will be successful and who will not.
This book focuses mainly on middle school students and how literacy affect their learning success. Literacy is where the students grasp new knowledge by using different strategies.
Discourse plays an important part in our students' learning, discourse is not used in particular but it states that the students' will learn to use language in different social situations.  Students need to develop the spoken and written language of a content to do well in assessments.  We all know that ELLs perform low than their "native-English-speaking peers" and so teachers need to learn to use different strategies to assist ELL students.
Two important elements the author mentions is prior knowledge and scaffolding.  

There are 7 Intellectual Practices:

• Practice 1 - Students engage with the key ideas and concepts of the discipline in ways that reflect how "experts" in the field think and reason
• Practice 2 - Students transform what they  have learned into a different form for use in a new content or for a different audience
• Practice 3 - Students make links between concrete knowledge and abstract theoretical knowledge
• Practice 4 - Students engage in substantive conversation
• Practice 5 - Students make connections between the spoken and written language of the subject and other discipline-related ways of making meaning
• Practice 6 - Students take a critical stance toward knowledge and information
• Practice 7 - Students use metalanguage in the context of learning about other things

Apprenticeship is the most natural way to learn and should be used with ELL students daily. Also "Rich Tasks" will connect the students' learning to the real world. 

First Blog

I found that blogging is a way to communicate with others and that millions of people "blog" daily. It is a social networking service that is interactive with other readers and bloggers. A blog can be text, images or links: it depends on what is being transmitted.
It was started in 1994 and it is a tool for outreach and opinions. There are different types of blogs such as:

• personal 
• collaborative/ group 
• microblogging
• corporate and organizational 
• genre
• media
• reverse

Blogging has its own Code of Conduct but it is up to the individual using the system. It also has legal liabilities and some people lost their jobs because of blogging.  Just like Facebook, it will create problems if one is not careful about things they blog about.

I find blogging interesting but I do not have time to blog and it seems like Facebook to me. It involves lots of people and I do not have the time to blog during the day because I am so busy teaching.  It may be a great way to learn about certain things but it is not for me. 

It was also too much information trying to figure out how to get on to blogging and getting things on but it is required for our class so here it goes. 

I am learning new things in this class especially about my own computer and using my learn and wiki.  I like the idea that all the information is in one location with Wiki.  I think all the things we are learning with blogging, Wiki, and class discussion is great for the older students and I do not find it relevant for my second graders.  The community that I am working in also has problems with getting internet and even WIFI.

 http://countrymusiclife.com/