At the very beginning of Chapter 3 in Teaching Early Literacy by Barone, Mallette, and Xu, the chapter opens by giving some statistics about LEP (limited English proficiency) students. The authors stated, “According to the U.S. Department of Education (2002), between 2001 and 2002 the total k-12 enrollment growth was 12%, whereas for the students with limited English proficiency (LEP), the enrollment growth was 95%. . . . The nature of the support for ELL children is affected by such factors as politics (e.g., Proposition 227 in California and Proposition 203 in Arizona; Gutierrez et al., 2002), budgetary cuts, the rapidly increasing number of ELL children with varied native languages, and the limited number of teachers who are prepared in the theories and pedagogy of teaching ELL children.” (Barone, Mallette, & Xu, 2005, p. 46). This quote really surprised me. I was surprised at the excuses for support in helping ELL students succeed. I understand that the economy is suffering but it is not fair to students to not have the qualified teachers to help teach English and have the students be as successful as possible.
I also like how Barone, Mallatte, and Xu provide a lot of examples on pages 56-57 in Chapter 3 on “Providing Comprehensible Input in Oral and Written Language”. These categories will be useful in my future classroom because it is almost guaranteed that teachers will have students who are not as fluent in English as others.
The section “Scaffolding ELL Children’s Language and Literacy Learning” on pages 63-76 provide several different approaches to helping ELL children with literacy, reading, and writing. Some of the examples given, such as “acting out a story…using wordless books…make print accessible to children…” (Barone, Mallatte, & Xu, 2005, pp. 63-74) are not activities or lesson plan approaches that I would have generally thought of. This section provides great examples that will be very useful.
In chapter 5, I like how they incorporated new technology into helping ELL students. Interactive games on educational and kid-friendly websites make learning fun and it has a great appeal to all students. Plus, using internet games at school gives students an opportunity to use the computer which might not be available at home.
Chapter 8 talks about engaging families. This to me is very important in helping a child succeed at school. I believe it is very important for the parents to be actively involved in their child’s academic career. “The information from the comparison is a tool for teachers to challenge any misconceptions they may have about students, their families, and their communities, and to develop a view that appreciates, values, and supports students’ prior experiences of ways with words and symbols.” (Barone, Mallatte, & Xu, 2005, p. 178). This quote really stood out to me. Having been in a classroom where teachers or aides make early judgmental opinions about a student is sad. I have personally been in a classroom during the first week of school and by the end of the week the teacher had already made opinions about each student and re-arranged the room based on which student would succeed more. The harder working students were placed in the front of the classroom, closest to the teacher, and the “slacker students” (as she called them) were placed towards the back of the classroom. This really bothered me and what surprised me was most of the students in the back of the classroom turned out to be harder workers than the students in the front of the classroom.
In chapter 9, I really like how Barone, Mallatte, and Xu discussed the 4 approaches to “Understanding and Helping At-Risk Readers”. I thought that was a very good section because it will help me as a future teacher to help and understand where my students are coming from. It also helps teachers not to place all ELL and at-risk readers into one category but shows you how to help them as best as possible. This quote really stood out to me as being inspirational rather than educational: “Perhaps most importantly, successful early intervention in literacy occurs when the driving force behind the effort is a community of instructors dedicated to the success of their students- teachers who intelligently use not only the findings of the NRP, but the knowledge that has been generated from the research the NRP didn’t examine as well.” (Barone, Mallatte, & Xu, 2005, p. 210).
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
News
Cate, you do a wonderful job of thoughtfully including specific detail and giving an overall organization to your entry.
June 30, 2011 at 9:22 amCate, remember where periods and commas go in relation to quote marks. I would also use another word to refer to quotes in your text: “this comment shows,” or “this suggestion,” or “”in one statement. . . .”
I was impressed by your comment about one statement being inspirational rather than educations. Inspiration is important to learning, isn’t it?