3. Reading and Understanding for ELL and Struggling Students

In “Helping English Language Learners Understand Content Area Texts,” issued by the Indiana Department of Education, the authors provide a vast array of strategies, procedures, and teaching tactics to aid English Language Learner (ELL) students in the complex process of reading disciplinary texts or understanding discipline-specific concepts. Though there are too many strategies to list for the scope of this blog post, there are major themes which appear throughout the guide: In order for ELL students to succeed in the process of understanding content, teachers must prepare lessons in a manner to specifically cater to ELL students and relate material to students' identities, lives, experiences, and knowledge (1-3). Regarding the reading itself, teachers must aid students by placing emphasis on teaching discipline-specific vocabulary, teaching and modeling reading strategies, using supplemental materials to make text more comprehensible (visuals, graphic organizers, charts, etc.), and issuing a variety of means and methods for students to read in class (3-7). For students to express their learning, teachers must facilitate their ELL students in the process of practicing their academic English verbally and help students demonstrate their understanding through academic writing (7-8).

Throughout the video “English Language Learner Instruction in Middle and High School,” produced by Colorín Colorado, Dr. Deborah Short also emphasizes some of these same points and she provides statistical, social, and academic evidence as to why education must be adjusted to better cater to ELL students. An important portion of the video, however, is video footage of teachers putting these strategies for ELL students into practice. As an example, one social studies teacher connects the content to students lives, experiences, and knowledge by having students critically think about why people would migrate to the United States, using their own families, friends, or selves as an example for evidence. In addition, this particular teacher uses clear and coherent verbal speech, graphic organizers (even simple ones like lists), group discussions, and visual aids (stickers, maps, etc.) (17:55-21:00).

I find all of these strategies and teaching adjustments useful in my class, even though I actually do not have any ELL students. I believe that these different strategies for ELL students can also be applied for all students who have diverse learning preferences or for struggling students who have trouble studying social sciences. Though I do not have any ELL students in my history classes, I do have Reclassified Fluent English-Proficient (RFEP) students in my class. These are students who were once classified as ELL students, but upon going through the long process necessary, have tested out of being an ELL student. Though these students are categorized as “fluent” or “proficient” in English, I still find that they may struggle with complex academic language or subject matter in my class.

19th-Century English is hard!

I recently carried out my lessons for EDTPA, and in order to better cater to the students who are struggling to read complex primary sources (in this case written in 19th-century American English), I implemented a number of strategies which can be found in the Indiana Department of Education guide. Prior to this particular lesson, I generally have assigned students to do reading or research on their own for their own personal projects, and in other cases, group projects only require one student to do the reading or research. For this particular lesson, I hoped to alter that trend, and rather, I had students read in groups. Each group was assigned one of four sources, and using their graphic organizers (which each student had individually), students had to determine if the source was a primary or secondary source, describe who wrote the source, explain why the source was written (the “argument” of the source, also assigned as a vocabulary word), and identify what they could conclude after reading the source (what they understand after reading it). As additional strategies for understanding, I engineered the groups so that struggling students would be with fluent readers, students had graphic organizers to map out their thoughts, key vocabulary was covered in advance, students were encouraged to look up confusing words with their computers, and the lesson concluded with an in-class discussion where each group shared their results and understanding.

Throughout the course of this lesson, I paid particular attention to one of my students who is currently struggling with reading in my class (among a couple others, but this is the focus student for this blog post). This particular student is an RFEP student and reads and writes very slowly. Noticeably, he tended to stay quiet and aloof from his peers throughout the course of the reading exercise. It became clear that rather than reading the text himself and sharing, he simply heard what the source was about from the other students and took that as his form of understanding. In turn, I stepped in and asked leading questions to this particular student to get him to investigate the source himself (without the help of his peers). For example, one of the questions I asked was “Why does Andrew Jackson want the Native Americans to leave?” Though the initial answer was “I don't know,” upon using leading questions to give the student an investigative goal, the student eventually analyzed the source and was able to come to a conclusion. In all, I think the experiment with group reading was of mixed success with this student; his understanding was indeed improved via his peers and especially with the class-wide discussion at the end of the lesson, but I also think he found his group a bit intimidating in that he could not read through the source as quickly or proficiently as his peers. I believe that the lesson learned here is that one or two strategies (e.g. a graphic organizer and group work) are not enough. Rather, the vast number of strategies as provided in the above sources need to be fully utilized in order to aid struggling students in their success. For this student, the lesson had to be modified part way through to include more strategies, this case being a shift toward scaffolded understanding through expressing verbal evidence by answering leading questions provided by the teacher.

In the future I would better utilize more strategies all at once while doing a reading exercise. Though I managed to cover quite a few in the design of this lesson, I believe that the Indiana Department of Education and the experts in the video both have a similar three-step theme that I did not entirely cover: connection to identity, reading strategies, and expression for learning. When I originally designed this particular lesson, I believe I largely left out the first step, which in actuality is one that I find most important: the connection to identity. Without this connection, my focus student did not actually have the motivation to read the source in the first place, and perhaps he simply felt that he was only reading it because he had to. As for my following lesson on the “Trail of Tears,” which I covered the following day, I ensured that students did a bit of writing on their own experiences, and in turn I felt that the engagement for the rest of the lesson was considerably better than the first lesson.

Here are some questions I would ask readers to consider:

1. What strategies do you use for your ELL students and/or struggling readers?

2. What do you think of my approach to group reading? What would you do differently?

3. Have you had to modify a lesson before in the middle of it in order to better serve a struggling student? Why?

Some additional resources:

1. An example of a culturally responsive lesson plan for ELL students (by me!): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RwqujjtDcmeqxSmbFgBhIsUjLwZ_Lgot/view?usp=sharing

2. California English Language Development Standards: https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/el/er/documents/eldstndspublication14.pdf