ACTION 1.4
Provide grade-level texts, meaning making and comprehension opportunities
We used to think...
Providing students with texts at their level, and ensuring they were mostly engaged with texts at their level would support their reading development and acceleration
Now we know...
Students must have consistent opportunities to engage with grade-level complex texts in ways that support their literacy and language development..
Best Practice Strategies
To cultivate a supportive multi-language learning environment:
Teachers
Provide sustained and extended, consistent text-based and meaningful student discourse and discussion, including engaging in read-alouds with intentional focus on developing language strategies.
Craft thoughtful, text-dependent questions to prompt students to discuss and present ideas about texts and develop language, vocabulary, syntactic awareness, comprehension, and metacognition/metalinguistic awareness.
Students
Engage in reading strategies that break down components of their comprehension, while also making connections to meaning and language and engaging with grade-level complex texts.
Resources
Interactive Read-Aloud
Reading Rockets/WETA Public Broadcasting
This instructional strategy allows students to scaffold and build background. This will assist teachers on how to reach their TK-K students. In this case, the students are able to scaffold and have meaningful conversations.
Using Read Alouds to Teach English Language Learners
Colorin Colorado/WETA Public Broadcasting
This resource shows how teachers can support students in developing listening, vocabulary, and oral language through participating in a well planned read aloud.
Discussion Protocols
EL Education
An excellent list of discussion protocols to facilitate increasing content knowledge and comprehension.
Crafting Text Dependent Questions
Achieve the Core
Guidance on how to craft & ask thoughtful questions that push students to cite evidence and make inferences based on the text.
Effective Questioning
West Ed
This tool provides teachers with an understanding of how to create thoughtful text-dependent questions.
Creating Text Sets to Support Culturally Relevant Instruction
Achieve the Core
This resource provides teachers with guidance on how to build knowledge and vocabulary through texts sets that center culturally relevant pedagogy
Juicy Sentence Guidance
Achieve the Core
This resource aims to give teachers some foundational terms paired with one instructional strategy to start doing metalinguistic work with close reading.
Comprehensive Strategies for Multilingual Learners
Colorin Colorado/WETA Public Broadcasting
This article provides a breakdown of strategies of a comprehension lesson for teachers. It explains the components needed to build a connection to the text by providing strategies for MLLs.
Supportive Language Instruction: 5 Scaffolding Strategies for ELL Students
Continental
This posting provides teachers with concrete scaffolding strategies to support MLLs
Planning for Reading Comprehension
Monica Collazo, Design Group
Teachers will be able to use this resource to plan for reading comprehension activities to be completed prior to reading, while reading, and after reading.
Story Maps
Reading Rockets/WETA Public Broadcasting
This resource will assist teachers because it can work in all aspects of ML learning. The teacher can color-coordinate the steps in the story to allow the students to see the elements of a story.