Chapter 5: Reading in A Second Language

Chapter 5 focuses mainly on students who are reading English as a second language and how difficult it is for them. It then states different activities for them to participate in in order for them to feel apart of the class. One particular point Gibbons brought up which I have never thought of was how ESL students/people feel when they are in an English speaking setting. He mentions that its like walking into a conversation without having any personal or background knowledge about the subject; ". . . you are effectively robbed of the ability to make use of a key resource for reading: what you already know: (Gibbons, 78). At the school I am placed they have a Chinese teacher who comes in a few times a week to teach Chinese. However, she doesn't know really how to converse with the other teachers because she doesn't have enough background knowledge of what they may be talking about. Her responses do not always correlate to what is being said which shows she does not understand the other communicator. I can relate to how she may feel because I traveled around Europe last Spring while studying abroad and while visiting Slovenia I didn't know one word they said, however when my friend introduced me to them they were so friendly and tried to speak in English so I could understand. The Slovenians helped me with some background knowledge on where we would be going and what to say to people so I would not feel out of place. In France, on the other hand, they did not want to speak English and forced you to feel completely out of the loop.
Looking at the different type of activities the students can do to help their background knowledge I came across one in particular with a good point to it. The activity is Storytelling in the Mother Tongue. This is when they first read it in their first language then read it in English so they know what is going on and they are able to correlate certain words with each other. This could also help them build their English vocabulary.

Schmar-Dobler Article. The link between literacy and Technology

This article talks about the importance of technology in the literacy world. They now include this statement in the definition of literacy as, "literacy skills necessary for individuals, groups, and societies to access the best information in the shortest time to identify and solve the most important problems and then communicate this information." In simpler terms, this means that students are expected to not only know how to read and write in the print world, but also in the digital world. With this technology expectation, students must know how to do a number of things. For example, students must be able to hand the volume of text that can be found when using the internet, because as we all know, their is endless amounts of information, and with that comes deciding on what is good information and what is bad. A student is also expected to know how to read and understand different formats that the internet produces; columns, graphs, charts, etc. A main part of this article was asking what can educators do to help students learn this process to be successful in the digital world. I was expecting a much more elaborate answer, but it is as simple as helping students take what the know in reading print text and apply it to the reading of internet text. Simple comprehension. Have students ask themselves questions, look for main ideas, draw inferences, etc. We as teachers need to guide students to help them reorganizing their experiences with text, and apply this knowledge to internet reading. This will help students become successful in the "digital world".

Owens, Hester, Teale article

Inquiry Based Learning and Technology

This article focused on inquiry-based learning and how technology can make inquiry-based learning an effective tool for all students, and in particular how it can serve as a motivational tool for underachieving students. Inquiry-based learning, as I found out from the authors, is learning not just the information, but also the who's, what's, when's, and why's, etc. and most importantly, how one can use the information effectively.
A great point that the authors also made, was that technology has enhanced the effectiveness of this form of learning for students, as they can now use the internet to research material, as well as using various forms of presentation tools like PowerPoint, Video, Graphing, etc. According to the authors, students become more engaged and motivated by their ability to choose a topic of interest and to have many tools in which to research it.
Inquiry-based learning is something I would like to become more familiar with as it seems to be a popular tool for both teachers and students. I have not had much experience with this in my field as I am in a Kindergarten room currently. However, I am interested in how to use Inquiry-based learning as an aspect of my day, and not a comprehensive tool, as Owens, Hester, and Teale describe it.

Sweet

I can write on this blog now. Get ready for a great post tomorrow night team.

The Internet and Education- response to Henry's article

In my fifth grade classroom, they have one hour a few times a week with guided instruction. However, their teacher also brings in the laptop cart when they are doing any kind of research for a project. Basically, the laptops are at their disposal, at fifth grade; however are they being taught how to evaluate the results they find when they search? The article states that, ". . . merely turning students loose to surf the Web will not necessarily help them make the required connections to develop a mental model of the process of Internet searching (Brandt, 1997)" (Henry, 624). As teachers, we have to point them in the right direction as far as what to look for in the URL and in the limited details they give under the title. Those details make the child's initial decision as far as which one they should take research from. They could be "researching" all they want on the internet and not find one credible site if they don't know how to look for it. "Teaching students how to search and how to read on the Internet needs to be a focus of classroom pedagogy for the future" in order for them to be successful in their searches.
The article recommends using Internet Workshops to show them what to look for and teach them skills and strategies for searching. They also recommend using Internet Scavenger Hunts teaching them how to navigate around the internet and find what the most effective keywords are when searching. One of the sites it recommends is actually one for ESL students which I think is awesome. This could also be used as a tool for connecting ESL students to non-ESL students because they would be working on the same thing. I feel when the students are working on the same things they feel more included since they can ask their neighbor a question about it instead of only being able to ask the teacher or the other ESL students. This will also provide time for interaction for the ESL students with non-ESL which we read is huge. ESL students need to feel welcome in a classroom full of Native English Speakers to help improve their English, conversation with kids their own age is a place to start and using the internet as a connection for that is not only something we should be doing with our students anyways but simple at the same time.
During the research process, the students have to keep the main idea in the back of their mind, but remember that it's the steps it takes to get there that are the important ones.

Scaffolding Language and Learners

Scaffolding is not a word I recognized at first, so I had to look it up. I found it is basically a supporting framework for something. As I reflected on what I read, I realized everything we do as teachers is scaffolding. As teachers, we may provide more support for our ESL students or Sp Ed students, however we are providing support for the gen. ed students and our students who are gifted and talented as well as the rest of the school. I say this because if we were not there the upper grades would collapse since the students would not have enough background information for them to succeed.
This applies to teaching language to ESL students at a young age. When ESL students are learning English they are not only learning the language, but also their other subjects are being taught in English so it is even more difficult for them to understand what the other subjects are including, as mentioned by Gibbons. In regards to learning a language as you come into a new country I feel as though you should already have a base for that nations language, it is out of respect. Learning a second language and wanting to be completely integrated in that language and learning your other subjects in it is one thing, but if you move to a new country with a different language it is not only difficult for the students to learn the material, but it may also drag the rest of the class down because of their questions and misunderstandings. This is where reinforcements come in and help those students understand the information in their own language then learn the information in English. I feel as though their native language will make more sense to them (initially obviously) than learning it in a different language and making sense of it like that. This refers back to the two different views of learning: the Empty Vessel/Banking and Progressive. I think the answer to which to use would be a little bit of each, I don't believe there is one right way, but if you implement their learning with different options of how to understand it, one way is bound to be better than the others.