Capitalizing on Similarities and Differences between Spanish and English

By: Colorín Colorado (2007)

 

            Every teacher, especially in the state of Florida, are going to have ELL Spanish-speaking students in their classroom. As a teacher, it is important for me to know the similarities and differences between English and Spanish. These characteristics impact my teaching and my classroom function. It is useful for me to know that Spanish has only five vowel sounds, whereas English has 14. This fact could cause the ELL student to have difficulty with pronouncing certain words which contain the vowels that they are unfamiliar with in their L1. I should also be aware that Spanish-speaking students may be able to grasp the English language quicker and easier than a student from somewhere else in the world, China, for example. The Chinese do not have a Roman alphabet like the English and Spanish language. Thus, Chinese-speaking students would not only have to learn pronunciations, cognates, syntax, etc., but they would also have to become familiar with the Roman alphabet and the variations of sounds that come with each letter. I should also know that the Spanish language uses many different verb, noun, and adverb changes. The language also implements dashes instead of quotation marks. Instead of reprimanding a student for using the wrong structure, I would need to be aware that their L1 considers the differences as the norm. Spanish-speaking students may also substitute their own L1 letters in place of the English to represent a sound. For example, ll is Spanish is pronounced like the y in English. Thus, students may spell yellow as llellow- they will confuse their L1 letter and sound combinations. Knowing the similarities and differences between the two languages is crucial in time management in the classroom.

            I plan on using the information found in this article in my own classroom. If I had a high population of Spanish-speaking students, I would have Spanish words posted in the classroom. For example, I would label the cabinet in both English and Spanish. Not only would it help the ELL students with recognizing everyday terms in English, but it would also give the English-speaking students background knowledge on Spanish terms. As mentioned in the latter paragraph, I would save time and energy by reminding the Spanish-speaking students of the correct English quotation marks when writing a quotation rather than continuously marking their dashes as incorrect; the students could become very confused. In a way, I would almost become a speech pathologist when teaching ELL students the correct way to sound out English phonemes in order to help develop their phonemic awareness. I would have to show the students how to form their mouth when pronouncing their letter sounds and combinations. For example, the ‘sh’ sound involves the tongue being behind the teeth, and the jaw just a little open. For these formations, I would give the student(s) an individual mirror and have them look at themselves while sounding the letters out. I would also use these when transitioning into the pronunciation of whole words.

            Many of the charts in this article should be presented to the Spanish-speaking students as time goes on, and should be presented at the appropriate times based on ability level. For example, one chart emphasizes the pronunciation of s as either an ‘s’ sound or a ‘z’ sound. These facts are known in the English language, but never thought about. As a teacher, it is my job to start thinking about my own pronunciations when working with ELL students. This chart is examined at the Learning Academy in my 5th grade classroom. The teacher does not give them the specific part, but breaks the chart into a Smart Board activity. This brings up some wonderings after reading this article:

Would Orton Gillingham instruction work for ELL students like it does for dyslexic students? We teach dyslexic students how to pronounce words correctly, just like we do for ELL students. How often should I correct ELL student’s grammar mistakes, like horse white instead of white horse? I do not want my student(s) to feel discouraged if I am always correcting their mistakes- mistakes that may not make sense to them or mistakes that may seem too small to worry about. Would reverse teaching work with ELL students? For example, if my ELL student teaches the class their L1 (in this case Spanish), would it work if the class taught the ELL English, perhaps explaining it in a way that I cannot?

It is critical for me to know English and Spanish similarities and differences in order to best assist by ELL students.

 

 

What Is the Difference between Social and Academic English?

By: Colorín Colorado (2007)

            All students come to school in order to learn academic English; social English is a factor that comes along with schooling that cannot be ignored. “Social English is the language of everyday communication in oral and written forms,” (Colorado, 2007). Social language include communicating (including, talking, writing, etc.) to others. In school, an example would be students talking to others at PE. ELL students start to develop to develop the talking aspect of social English before developing the literacy component. Academic English is much more complex than social English. Academic English, “[I]s related to a standards-based curriculum, including the content areas of math, science, social studies, and English language arts,” (Colorado, 2007).

Academic English is the most important part of the students success in school- students can learn without socializing, but they cannot learn if they do not understand Academic English. Students develop each skill at different rates- it is important for me to know what their rate is in order for me, as the teacher, to know when to introduce the next skill. The beginning stage of proficiency is when the ELL student makes repetitive and general remarks/statements. Basically, they know what to say and when to say it, but they do not actually know what it means. The next stage, intermediate, it when the students can pronunciation and understand grammar, but many of the rules are still mistaken. The final stage is the advanced stage. In this stage the students initiate social English, and they become fluent in academic English- the two are equal.  As a teacher, I need to start with the development of social English in order to make the ELL students feel more comfortable in their environment. The more comfortable they are, the more they are willing to speak out and learn. I should also use social English to present new academic English. I could possibly have peers teach one another concepts that others may not understand. I need to challenge thinking with my students. The more challenged they are, the more they are thinking outside of the box and pushed to do/learn more than they usually would.

            With all of this in mind, knowing the difference between social/academic English and knowing what/how to incorporate these in my classroom, the more wonderings I come up with. I can use blooms to create higher order thinking? I do not want my students to become overwhelmed and thus, give up on their academic English. The text also says that one develops before the other, and that a student may be better at one type than the other. If I have a student that has not yet fully developed their social English, will they listen and talk to me when I am instructing or doing one-on-one teaching?

 

 

 

Chapter 1. The Importance of Background Knowledge Marzano

Reading Response 4

 

According to the article, research literature has found that background knowledge is a key factor to the success of future academics relative to the information already learned. So, if the student has poor background experience on a particular subject, they may not do as well learning new material related to that subject as another student who has had previous experience. For example, a child who has background experience on double digit multiplication will do better learning triple digit multiplication than a student who has not had any experience dealing with double digit multiplication. I correlate background knowledge to tutoring. I went through tutoring in order to be introduced to material the teacher was going to cover the following week. I was able to think about it and process it better if I was introduced to it before the class was. As stated throughout the article in multiple studies, it is found that children who have previous background knowledge perform better on the new material. Rather than starting from scratch and building knowledge that can later be used for “background knowledge,” the teacher can jump forward and give the children more enriched experiences. Marzano provides a bar graph that shows the relationship between background knowledge and academic achievement. It shows that students with a high background knowledge have a greater growth in academic achievement than students who have a poor amount of background knowledge.

 

We acquire background knowledge through our ability to process/store information and through our academic experiences. Marzano used the example of two students at the museum. One student has a high ability to process and store information (high fluid intelligence); because of this, the student will be able to retain most of the information presented to them at the museum, and, thus, has translated this information into their academic background knowledge. On the other hand, the student with a low fluid intelligence will not be able to do this. The other factor is our academic background, or the experiences that we have had that will contribute to our knowledge on a subject. Marzano uses the same example of the two students again. However, Marzano says that the first student goes to the museum once a week, and the second student goes once a month. The first student has had many museum encounters and can add this to their background.

 

Marzano discussed the connection between academics and a child’s socio-economic status. Marzano included the March 2003 Census conducted by the US Census Bureau that compared yearly income to education. By looking at the statistics, it is apparent that the higher the yearly income is, the higher the degree of education is. For example, if the yearly income is between $10,000 and $11,000 then the individual is not as likely to graduate high school. This annual income is just slightly above the US povery line of $9,000. Whereas if the yearly income is around $62,000 the individual is likely to receive a doctorate degree. Thus, students who do not graduate from high school are likely to obtain jobs that supply income that is just above the poverty line- if you do not graduate from high school you are most likely going to live with a low socio-economic status. The higher ones degree/educational background is, the more one gets paid and the higher their SES is. Marzano also included a chart that takes a look at the relationship between poverty and the scores on an academic test. It is shown that 63% of students fail if born near the poverty line and only 37% pass. The reverse is true for students not born near the poverty line- 63% pass and 37% fail. Marzano goes on to state that based on one’s academic background and low poverty stance, the psychological factors based on this circumstance are tremendous. Families with poor SES are stressed. Because of the stress in the home, students experience fighting between spouses which can then translate into low self-esteem for the student. Students who come from low socio-economic homes do not interact with their parents as frequently as students who come from not as low socio-economic backgrounds. Families with low SES do not interact with their children frequently because they may have multiple jobs, thus, the children are not as exposed to language.

 

 

 

 

Fluency: Bridge from Decoding to Reading Comprehension By: John J. Pikulski and David J. Chard

Reading Response 3

 

Key Points/Quotes/Page Numbers:

Page 1

• Fluency has received negative views until recently.

• The National Reading Panel discusses fluency as one of only five critical components of reading processes.

• Fluency: “The ability to read text quickly, accurately, and with proper expression.”

• Three dimensions: Fluency, accuracy, expressiveness:

  • Two of the three dimensions can be overserved only orally, and this may have contributed to the negative attention.

• Was seen as just oral reading.

• Beginning readers spend a lot of time doing expressive reading and not enough with silent reading

• The Literacy Dictionary defines fluency as, “freedom from word identification problems that might hinder comprehension.”

• Samuels says, “To experience good reading comprehension, the reader must be able to identify words quickly and easily.”

            Page 2                                

• Correlation between fluency and reading comprehension was done by the National Assessment of Educational Progress in Reading: “44 percent of the subjects were found to be disfluent when reading grade-level appropriate materials that they had previously read silently.”

  • The study showed a positive relationship between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension.

  • New definition based on the study, “Reading fluency refers to rapid, efficiency, accurate word recognition skills that permit a reader to construct meaning of text. Fluency is also manifested in accuracy, rapid, expressive oral reading and is applied during, and makes possible, silent reading comprehension.”

• So basically, one must not only be able to read out loud, but read silently, and the practice from reading out loud will help with the silent reading. Fluency involves both reading activities.

• LeBerge and Samuels: we can only do one thing at a time, and we can only do more than one thing if we alternate our attention- what we really know will be done automatically

• Reading requires at least two activities: word identification/decoding, and comprehension (reading efficiently and effectively)

• Stanovich: readers who have achieved some fluency are more likely to engage in more extensive amounts of reading

            Page 3

• Ehri’s Stages of Reading Development:

• “Being able to read words by sight automatically is the key to skilled reading of text. This allows readers to process words in text quickly, without attention directed to the word itself.” (Page 3)

• Pre-Alphabetic: no appreciation of alphabetic principle and uses visual cues to identify word

• Partial Alphabetic: reader only focuses on specific easily identifiable parts of the word

• Fully Alphabetic: sounds correspond to letters, and thus are able to pronunciate (become sight words)

• Consolidated Alphabetic: repeated encounters means that the reader can store the letter patterns for different words

            Page 5

• Ehri’s three prerequisite “graphophonic” capabilities: letter familiarity, phonemic awareness, knowledge of how graphemes typically represent phonemes in words.

• Progress is based on oral language development.

• To move on to the different alphabetic stages, students must have a firm grasp on the alphabetic principle and apply the information between letters and sounds.

• Some students don’t need to read, read, and read some more- they need extra teacher guidance (modeled reading, independent reading, chunking of text, coached reading, etc.)

            Page 6

• Improve fluency= read alouds

• Rereading or repeated oral readings of the text is the most frequently used approach to improving fluency.

            Page 7

• It is not yet proven if reading aloud is the best way, but children should also be encouraged to read independently and silently as much as possible.

• Reading and wide reading is based on language and cognitive abilities.

• Feedback is associated with improved accuracy and rate.

• Using three times a nine week intervention instructional repeated reading made significant fluency gains and comprehension for ELL’s.

• Meaningful groups or word phrases are signaled for improving fluency and comprehension.

• Carbo study: students listen to tapes and follow along, text was chunked into short phrases and had students look at them for a longer period of time.

• Two standardized tests to measure fluency: the Gray Oral Reading test, and a standardized measure of the speed of reading of single words (limitations).

  • Gray’s norms are over a decade old, and the single words test violate guidelines offered by the Reading Panel.

• Deno introduced oral reading fluency to the field of special education.

            Page 9

• “Oral reading is measured by timing a child’s reading in connected text for one minute while recording errors that the child demonstrates during the reading.”

• Essential dimensions for the assessment of fluency include measures of: oral reading accuracy, oral reading rate, quality of oral reading, reading comprehension

• Evaluated informally, Leveled Reading Passages Assessment Kit is a comprehensive instrument that attempts to address all the essential dimensions of fluency (“provides materials and descriptions of procedures that allows for the assessment of a full construct of fluency for students who are at the beginning stages of reading through the sixth grade”).

 

Summary of the Article:

Fluency has been neglected and overlooked in the past; however, it has received more attention presently due to many research studies and findings. Fluency is critical for reading achievement and comprehension. Fluency can be seen and test in oral reading, but silent reading must happen if a student is going to accurately and effectively read out loud. Nonsufficient readers will struggle reading aloud, thus they may need extra assistance and guidance. This process can be draining for the student, and the student in turn may become frustrated. Fluency is the foundation of oral skills and phonemic awareness. Without this foundation, a student will not be able to decode effectively. Ehri gave many stages of word recognition and it explains how readers will recognize sight words. Carbo conducted a study where she chunked to help repeated reading. She had students listen to tapes and follow along in their books, where the text was chunked into short phrases. She made significant gains in word recognition and accuracy. The more students read, the more their fluency and reading comprehension increases.

 

Questions for Discussion:

It was mentioned in the text that non-achieving students would not benefit from reading continuously, but should receive help from a teacher. The teacher should give this student one-on-one assistance to improve their decoding, comprehension, and accuracy. However, it wasn’t mentioned if the student should be transitioned into more reading. When is an appropriate time for these struggling students to increase their independent reading?