Another common suggestion for working with ELs is to have the students repeat after the teacher. For example, students might be asked to repeat the selection title or the author’s name as well as key words from the reading selection. Another repetition activity also promoted is echo reading. In echo reading, the teacher reads a short text section aloud, and English learners echo (repeat) what the teacher says. This practice is commonly used for emergent bilinguals at beginning and intermediate proficiency levels. While this activity can be useful at times, it should not be used with every lesson and should be tailored to a students’ needs and levels of English proficiency. However, the basal supports for ELs typically don’t differentiate by English proficiency levels.
An activity sometimes suggested for English learners is to distinguish between words that are minimal pairs. Minimal pairs are words that differ by one sound (or phoneme) such as big and bag or big and pig. Having students repeat minimal pairs or identify which word of a pair the teacher has pronounced is a practice that was commonly used in teaching ESL in the past. There is little purpose in repeating isolated words, usually not related to the readings in the lesson, and there is no research showing that this practice improves listening, speaking, or reading skills. An overarching goal for English learners in a basal program should be to build comprehension of academic English during reading: Activities such as identifying words from minimal pairs does not serve the interest of helping students improve their reading comprehension.
Separate EL Resource Book
Most basal programs include a resource book and online resources for emergent bilinguals. In a typical program, teachers are directed to have English learners listen to a recorded version of the text selection, usually provided as an online resource before the reading lesson. The teacher then pre-teaches key vocabulary from the reading. After that, the teacher follows a script to teach the selection. First, the teacher reads the text aloud, one paragraph or short section at a time, and then stops after each paragraph or section and asks a series of questions to guide students through the reading. This plan for supporting English learners is teacher centered rather than student centered and seldom engages students in meaningful language use. Further, there is no attempt to shift the responsibility from the teacher to the students. Instruction should help emergent bilinguals develop the skills needed to become independent readers.
Basal program teacher scripts are designed to present some background or context for the reading, define key vocabulary, and build understanding. Questions are often based on the pictures in the text. Teachers ask students about what they see in the picture. The resource guide provides teachers with expected answers from the students.
There are several problems to an approach that uses a question-answer script. Many of the questions teachers are supposed to ask are syntactically complex and contain vocabulary that many emergent bilinguals could not be expected to have acquired. Since language acquisition results from receiving comprehensible input, it is unlikely students would benefit from questions that are incomprehensible to them. Further, asking and answering questions is an oral exercise. Although the development of oral English is important for learning to read, during reading instruction time students should spend most of their time interacting with written text.
The question-answer format follows a traditional IRE (initiation, response, evaluation) approach to teaching that has been shown to be ineffective in promoting either language development or content knowledge. It discourages real language-rich discussions and higher-order thinking because most questions have only one answer that is found in the story selection. Another problem is that stopping to ask questions after each paragraph breaks up the reading and makes text comprehension more difficult. This IRE approach is different from a gradual release of responsibility model with read alouds, shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading that focuses on comprehension of whole texts and moves students toward reading independence.
Finally, one of the major dilemmas facing nearly every teacher is not having sufficient time to meet instructional objectives. The underlying assumption of EL activities in basals is that teachers must take extra time to implement these activities with English learners, despite the fact that teachers in mainstream classes have only limited time for teaching language arts.
Rather than using supplemental activities to meet the needs of emergent bilinguals, teachers need an approach that can be effective for both English learners and native English speakers. In this book, we describe an approach teachers can use for all their students. The strategies we describe are designed to build background; help students develop language arts skills; and actively engage students in reading, writing, and discussing key concepts as they study different inquiry units in their language arts reading programs.
In the chapters that follow, we provide four sample units of inquiry commonly found in mandated English language arts programs. For each of these units, we suggest strategies that will effectively engage and support all students, including English learners. For each strategy, we suggest Standards based skills these activities help students develop. We also include content and language objectives for different activities in each unit. These sample units of inquiry provide examples of an approach that teachers can use in language arts instruction. At the end of each chapter, we summarize the strategies used throughout the unit. We also list additional texts teachers can use to supplement the unit.
Key Practices for Working With English Learners
In addition to explaining specific strategies, the units we describe exemplify several key practices for working with emergent bilinguals. These practices are essential to effective teaching. In the following sections, we briefly discuss each of the following key practices.
Organizing around big question units of inquiry
Getting to know your English learners so you can best teach them
Creating a multilingual/multicultural environment
Understanding the language proficiency of your students
Using a gradual release of responsibility model of reading and writing
Drawing on English learners’ background knowledge and cultures
Drawing on students’ home languages using translanguaging strategies
Organizing Around Big Question Units of Inquiry
As you teach the units in your basal program, you will see that the publisher has chosen readings that are connected to a topic or theme, such as weather or animal habitats. One of the key ways to help English learners understand the readings and acquire needed skills and vocabulary is to help them see the relationships among the readings. You can do this by having the students answer an overarching question as they become involved in the unit. For example, you could ask, “How does the weather affect our lives?” While it is good to make the connections among the readings and activities salient for all your students by linking them to a big question, it is especially critical for students who are not yet proficient in English. There are several reasons you should organize your teaching around units of inquiry based on big questions:
1 Because students see the big picture, the English instruction is more comprehensible.
2 Content areas (math, science, social studies, language arts) are interrelated.
3 Vocabulary is repeated naturally, as it appears in different content area studies.
4 Because the curriculum makes sense, second language learners are more fully engaged
