Voices from the Middle - Teaching English Language Learners, May 2004

In our enthusiasm for teaching English to English Language Learners, we often forget to celebrate the multiple cultures and languages in our classrooms. Sumaryono and Ortiz help us walk this fine line, offering advice, examples, and resources for maintaining a critical but often-overlooked area—cultural identity.

Teachers who are facing multiple languages and cultures in their classrooms for the first time may be fooled by the English Language Learner who has become proficient in English. That competence in social communication may disguise difficulty with understanding and generating academic language. Through two profiles of middle school students who fit this category, Carroll and Hasson help teachers learn to identify this problem in their own students; their specific strategies for teaching academic language within the context of literature study build a foundation for current and future academic success.

There is nothing more motivating than to feel you have something to contribute to a group situation. The Nilsens have used that basic premise to devise activities that teach all students about the connections between languages while highlighting the special expertise that bilingual students can add to such a conversation. Activities and word lists give valuable practical support to this principle.

A visit to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis provided one teacher with a vehicle for improving the language and literacy skills of a group of students from varied backgrounds. Using art as a basis for lessons that used academic language, cultural expertise, and writing, Saurino links creative expression with a host of skills and perspectives to free her students’ minds and bodies to imagine.

Jim Burke is a master at making pedagogical principles accessible with practical teaching aids, most notably graphic organizers. Here, he begins with a question, ’What can teachers do that makes a difference for all students, that meets them where they are and helps get them where they need to be as reader and writers“as students?” Then he finds answers in an academic vocabulary list, a main idea organizer, a comparison organizer, and a list of practical teaching principles.

Crutcher tackles the question of what issues are appropriate for examination in young adult literature, making the case that keeping kids safe means recognizing the need to examine tough issues openly.

Wilhelm takes the stance that the best way to increase the word knowledge of English Language Learners is to use their “primary discourse” their first language, cultural knowledge, and sense of identity.

What interests students? What will get them reading? Look at the adult lifelong readers in their lives and you’ll find a broad collection of genres. With this list in hand, Daniels offers suggestions for scrounging, borrowing, and taking advantage of teacher-friendly programs to fill your classroom library with something for everyone.

Making words “visible” is at the heart of helping students to expand their personal vocabularies, especially English Language Learners. Students talk about words, draw them in context, and use graphic organizers to organize their thinking and see connections among words.

Understanding the consistent system that underlies English spelling can be a huge step in making that spelling predictable for all students. Templeton maintains that English Language Learners can benefit from this understanding as much as anyone, if not more. Explaining this system to students, assessing their current spelling knowledge, and employing specific instructional strategies will go a long way to developing their literacy.

“… to make the language of literature useful to readers, students need to practice using academic vocabulary in ways that deepen their understanding of how stories work.” To that end, Jago offers a review of Freytag’s Pyramid and an example of how work with the concept of plot structure positively affected student understanding and writing.

Sign language is no less a second language that Spanish or Tagalog or German. With that in mind, Rief tackles the challenges of maintaining the strategies and expectations that she knows work for all students, including English Language Learners, thus giving this deaf student the same strong foundation, the same experiences, and the same pride as her hearing peers.

Making a difference in the literacy development of English Language Learners can be a daunting goal. Here are online resources that offer support for teachers in their efforts to advance literacy for English Language Learners at all levels of competency.

Reviews of: Multicultural and Multilingual Literacy and Language: Context and Practices, Promoting a Global Community through Multicultural Children’s Literature, Change My Life Forever: Giving Voice to English Language Learners, and An Island of English: Teaching ESL in Chinatown.

Students who want to share their love of reading have contributed books from classics to fantasy to basketball to Harry Potter.