Accelerate Comprehension For All Students

Ramseur Elementary School Teacher for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing for 5 years. Randleman Elementary School 3 rd and 4 th grade teacher for 4 years ESL teacher now for 3 years

I have been formally trained to use this program by the developer over a two year period. It is used in your school’s ESL classrooms; however, it is a program that was designed primarily for classroom teachers to use to help accelerate the reading and vocabulary development of their English language learners. Goal for Today: I will briefly explain what ExC-ELL is and how you could best use it in your classroom with all students, not only your ELLs.

Benefits of using Non-Fiction Can be broken up into small chunks to analyze. It is real. Figurative language can be difficult for any learner. Non-Fiction reading increases vocabulary growth since it capitalizes on interests and experience. Did you know that a reader must understand at least 95% of the words in a text to comprehend it?

Tier 1 – Words that students should know, but need a bit of a reminder prior to reading. Tier 2 – Tricky words or phrases, polysemous words, multi-meaning words, idioms. Words that students need to know to understand the reading. Words that will appear in other text often. Tier 3 – Content specific, subject specific, text / passage specific words. Students must hear and use the word at least 15 times to truly own the word. hope Just as However On the other hand resemble actually different as night and day drives me crazy works out though notice

Tier 1 – Words that students should know, but need a bit of a reminder prior to reading. Tier 2 – Tricky words or phrases, polysemous words, multi-meaning words, idioms. Words that students need to know to understand the reading. Words that will appear in other text often. Tier 3 – Content specific, subject specific, text / passage specific words. Students must hear and use the word at least 15 times to truly own the word. Yet Just as Are similar in that In contrast However On the other hand resemble actually different as night and day drives me crazy works out though notice

1.State / Show the word – Put your finger under the word as you read it. Break up the syllables when you write it on the board. 2.Say it 3 times each – All students must say the word. 3.Provide the word in context – Provide the sentence with the word from the text they will be reading. 4.Give a dictionary definition – Students need to see how the dictionary presents a word (syllables, part of speech, dictionary lingo) 5.Student friendly definition – In other words…. 6.Activity – Provides the students with a chance to practice using the words. They may not be using it correctly. You will be guiding them through the correct usage and they will become more comfortable with the word throughout the reading and writing lessons with these words. 7.Special parts – synonyms, antonyms, word families, polysemous, multi-meaning words, blends, diagraphs, word endings, chunks

Model reading the text out loud. Model the strategy you are teaching. Visualization, Paraphrasing, Cause and Effect, Summarizing, Compare and Contrast, etc. Do this through reading the text to the students. Partner reading Partner A reads to partner B Partner A then retells to partner B what he or she just read. Start off with a sentence, maybe two and gradually move to a paragraph. Great way to start teaching STP (Stop, Think and Paraphrase) Variation Partner A reads and then Partner B tells Partner A what he or she just read.

Holding students accountable for using the tier words, the language of…. phrases, as well as sentence starters. Now, they may not use the words correctly at the beginning, but the expectation of using those words or phrases is there and overtime the usage will be correct. Some example sentence starters are: Summarizing: This story tells about a …. This selection is about the … One important fact here is that…. Making Connections, Visualizing: This reminds me of the time when I …. My parents told me a story about…. I read in another book that…. Sequencing: The first step in this experiment is…. The sequence for answer this math problem is….. Initially the character did was… Following that the character…..

Three activities I use a lot in my classroom to reinforce the vocabulary and linguistic phrases taught are: Write Around – In groups, each person has a paper and a pencil and a prompt written on the top of their paper. Give the students 1 – 2 minutes to add just one sentence to the paper. After that time limit, pass the paper to the next person and repeat this as many times as you would like. Each group reads through them and choose the best one to edit OR each person gets his or her paper back and edits it. (Racionation – mini-lessons) Prove it – Find a simple declarative sentence from the text. Have students copy the sentence on a clean sheet of paper. They are then told to Prove It! Students will re-read the passage and then be encouraged to provide details from the text to prove that sentence correct by providing details.

Round Table – (Round 1) In groups, there is one paper and one pencil. Students write one word or phrase from the passage that was read and pass the paper to the next person. This continues until the teacher calls time. Count the number of words or phrases, delete repeated words. The words and phrases must have meaning with the text. Have students think of a strategy to increase their number – encourages re-reading. (Round 2) Apply that strategy and do it again. Students are required to use the tier words, phrases and sentence stems taught during the lesson and past lessons.

Guided Reading Science and Social Studies vocabulary instruction. Read a chunk from the book, and dissect the content and the vocabulary. Have them write about the material using the tier words. The chosen passage should not be complete unit or chapter. It can be a page or just a few paragraphs. It could even be a map or a chart. The key is to explicitly teach the vocabulary and give them opportunities to use the vocabulary.

Calderon, Maria Teaching Reading & Comprehension to English Learners, K-5 Readworks.org

Informational text contributes to vocabulary growth and build knowledge; it capitalizes on students’ interest and curiosities, and provides valuable links to their own experiences (Duke & Pearson, 2002) There are four components for teaching vocabulary: “1) providing rich and varied language experiences; 2) teaching individual words; 3) teaching word-learning strategies; and 4) fostering word consciousness” (Graves, 2006) Strategies for leaning vocabulary and strategies for reading comprehension should not be taught separately but in the context of the text students are to read (Calderon, 2009) Being able to comprehension informational text is important because the text that most adults read are informational (Duke & Pearson 2002) Seventy percent of students in grades 4-12 are low-achieving writers (Persky, Daane, & Jin, 2003).