This chapter focuses on literacy in the classroom and different different strategies that will help the ELL acquire the content more fully. Emergent literacy is when the student is first learning to read. Some ideas to help these students read for comprehension are: drawing on their prior knowledge, familiarize them with the specific site words in the text, gaining reading behaviors, and participate in the culture of reading. This is a way to help the students understand what they are reading, understand the vocabulary in the text, understand what is appropriate reading/book behavior, and finally enjoying reading. This may be difficult for many students learning to read because they aren't necessarily learning to read for enjoyment, but are being taught in a standardized fashion. "Despite the success of approaches based on the social construction of knowledge, a generation of students is being taught how to read through a series of controlled behaviorally based lessons" (LDR, 172).
The LEA (language experience approach) encourages students to contribute their own input into classroom discussions and writing selections. This is a collaborative process where the students and the teacher work together to create a writing piece. This is beneficial because all of the students are able to read what was written as a class.
A Balanced Literacy Approach is when the teacher uses multiple strategies and activities to promote an increased reading and writing scores. Some strategies that are Incorporated in this approach are: shared reading, read-alouds, reading workshop, shared writing, interactive writing, writers workshop, and word study.
In many of the classes that I have attended at CSUSB, many teachers support the balanced literacy approach. This being said, I have been able to practice some of these strategies in my own classroom. Last quarter I took a class by Stan Swartz. He had many great ideas that seemed to prove effective with my students. I have chosen to share his website because there are many strategies listed, as well as links that may help a teacher in their quest to balanced literacy.
http://www.stanswartz.com/
Lindsy Hughes writes; "My students gain confidence through reading stories over again and achieving independence. They feel successful when they see their ideas as part of the interactive writing we do". This is something that I have found to be effective in my classroom as well. I am, however, still working on being creative and making the process more fun for the students.
ReplyDeleteAmanda Wright writes; "It boils down to giving the students a purpose to read and bringing their culture into the classroom in some stories and providing universal access to the students". I really like the way she wrote this quote as it makes perfect sense!