Creating Lives: An Introduction to Biography

Strategies

Incorporating literacy skills into each lesson is essential to my students' success. This is especially true for adolescent ELLs who are reading well below grade level. If students receive additional reading instruction in the content areas, they will be able to transfer these skills to the other subject areas. I have seen this occur in my own classroom in which I am responsible for English and Social Studies instruction. The literacy skills students learn in English class are successfully transferred to our Social Studies class. My ultimate goal is to enable students to be successful both linguistically and academically when they are mainstreamed into a regular education classroom.

Proficient Reading Strategies

Although about two-thirds of the students have already been in our class, many, if not all, will need assistance to become proficient in the use of or familiar again with the reading strategies. They are able to learn these strategies by having a teacher explain, demonstrate, and apply them while reading. I will do just that during the teaching of the book, The Circuit, a series of short stories based on the life of the author, Francisco Jimenez, who grew up as a migrant farm worker. This will serve as a springboard for the unit's focus on Cesar Chavez. Students will be able to connect to many of the stories, especially the ones about family life and school. Additionally, the use of Spanish within the text will be familiar for the students. It is vital to allow for opportunities to practice the strategies with the students, providing feedback and time for discussion. ELLs' use of proficient reader strategies (predicting, making connections, questioning, inferring, visualizing, determining the main idea, and summarizing) to assist them before, during, and after reading is critical to their comprehension of complex texts. All of these strategies can provide ELLs with the tools they need to construct meaning from the complex texts that they are required to read in all of their content area classes.

Vocabulary Development

Vocabulary development activities help to highlight the most important words for text comprehension. These activities help to change students' understanding of the meanings through direct instruction and context. Children learn the majority of their vocabulary indirectly in the following three ways: conversations with adults, adults reading to them, and reading on their own. Explicit instruction in vocabulary is critical to increase ELLs text comprehension and content knowledge.

As a teacher, one becomes aware of a variety of barriers to vocabulary development. These include the complexity of the English language, word poverty, and lack of background or prior knowledge. All of which present issues for teachers. In addition, ELLs' parents are not proficient in English and are unable to help in the home. Despite this, there are some tips for teachers in regard to vocabulary development. First, start with what students already know, build new terms and concepts on this information. Second, provide students with multiple exposures to new terms and concepts. They need varied activities to remember the words and their meanings. Third, include discussion as one of the vocabulary activities. Lastly, teaching vocabulary words through the content is more effective than teaching in isolation. Vocabulary needs to be taught explicitly and be part of the daily curriculum.

Graphic Organizers

A graphic organizer is "a visual and graphic display that depicts the relationships among facts, terms, and ideas within a learning task." ⁴³ In my classroom, two of the first words students learn in English are "graphic" and "organizers"! Using graphic organizers helps to make content more supportive for students, scaffolding the information to be learned and giving them access to content that otherwise might be too difficult for them. This also helps to organize complex information into a much easier-to-read format ⁴⁴ which is helpful to ELLs. In our case, we will use graphic organizers to organize the general information pertaining to biography so that they can get a visual picture of the important concepts related to biography. Additionally, they will create graphic organizers of the information that they read from the variety of sources they will research about Cesar Chavez and the prominent Hispanic person whom they will be interviewing.

Teacher Modeling Including Read-Aloud and Think-Aloud

Teacher modeling will be used in a variety of ways. Specific types of teacher modeling include the Teacher Read-Aloud and Think-Aloud. How students read is as important as what they read. Reading aloud is an important tool, even for older learners. The text that is read aloud is usually above students' reading comprehension level but not their listening level. ⁴⁵ It can be used to allow students to focus on comprehension rather than worrying about pronouncing everything correctly. At the same time, it does also provide a model of expressive reading and correct pronunciation. It makes the text more accessible, builds the students' oral English capability, and helps them construct meaning from the text. ⁴⁶ A teacher read-aloud is used because of the students' limited English proficiency levels. Teacher think-alouds are vital for students to hear someone, in this case the teacher, verbalize the process of reading by using the proficient reading strategies. Fitzgerald and Graves ⁴⁷ posit that this helps students to glean more meaning and interest from the text. I will model the English language for the students. The read-aloud provides students access to the true language of the stories without making them frustrated with the text itself. Students will have multiple opportunities to hear me read this language before they try it for themselves. Preparation for a read-aloud is important. One should practice reading the passage ahead of time as well as mark out places in which you would like to stop so that students can hear you make predictions and connections and ask questions.

Additionally, I will model the interviewing process on numerous occasions in a "fishbowl" format. Students will be completely new to this concept. They will need explicit instruction in how to conduct a good interview. This will begin with brainstorming about what a good interview looks and sounds like. Then, they will need to experience this. I will invite administrators and/or colleagues into our classroom. The interviewer (me) and interviewee (administrator/colleague) will be in the middle of a circle with all of the students surrounding us. We will practice the interview techniques we have learned about and students will take notes using a graphic organizer to evaluate the interview. In doing so, students will be able envision what an interview is and how to conduct one.

Collaborative Learning/Groupwork

Students need to learn how to work together to accomplish goals – those set by the teacher and by themselves. This is a basic requirement for many positions or jobs that they will hold in the future. Working together, relying on each other helps to build team working skills. In collaborative learning, each group member is accountable to each other, dependent upon each other and contributes the established goals. Everyone has some strength to share. ⁴⁸ Together, more is accomplished. Opportunities to learn about each other before and while working help to promote the camaraderie and cohesiveness necessary to work well together. Individual and group evaluations are necessary to monitor the group's work (product) and their progress in teamwork.