How EL impacts reading
- English language learners will need explicit phonics instruction that is taught systematically. Emphasis will need to be put on the areas, such as phoneme combinations, that do not exist in their first language.
- Reading comprehension is another area of difficulty for EL students, especially linguistic knowledge skills such as vocabulary and listening comprehension.
- EL students will need extra support in vocabulary development to ensure understanding of the word including the semantic, syntactic, and morphological knowledge.
References
Nieser, K., & Cárdenas-Hagan, E. (2020). Phonics Development Among English Learners. In Literacy Foundation for English Learners: A Comprehensive Guide to Evidence-Based Instruction (pp. 61–88). essay, Brookes Publishing.
Pollard-Durodola, S. D. (2020). Vocabulary Instruction Among English Learners. In Literacy Foundation for English Learners: A Comprehensive Guide to Evidence-Based Instruction (pp. 117–145). essay, Brookes Publishing.
Vargas, I., Hall, C., & Solari, E. (2021). Brick by Brick: Landmark Studies on Reading Development, Assessment, and Instruction for Students Who Are English Learners. The Reading League Journal, 37–41.
Recommendations for instruction
- English language learners will need explicit phonics instruction in several areas including letter recognition, grapho-phonemic knowledge, decoding, and morphological awareness. It is also important to make sure students understand how English might differ from their first language in these areas.
- EL students will also benefit from phonics instruction that is incorporated with fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension instruction.
- Shared book reading, where the child and the adult talk about the book as they read, has been shown to be one of the most beneficial activities to increase children’s vocabularies, as well as repeated readings of the same book to provide multiple exposures to new words and concepts.
References
Nieser, K., & Cárdenas-Hagan, E. (2020). Phonics Development Among English Learners. In Literacy Foundation for English Learners: A Comprehensive Guide to Evidence-Based Instruction (pp. 61–88). essay, Brookes Publishing.
Pollard-Durodola, S. D. (2020). Vocabulary Instruction Among English Learners. In Literacy Foundation for English Learners: A Comprehensive Guide to Evidence-Based Instruction (pp. 117–145). essay, Brookes Publishing.
EL Sample lesson plan
Screeners have shown that Marina is struggling in a couple different areas. One area that is difficult for her is the subtle difference between the short vowel sounds made by e and i. She also appears to be having trouble with phoneme grapheme correspondences which is making encoding difficult for her. Additionally, there are several consonants and digraphs that she is confusing. This includes /b/ and /v/ likely because they make the same sound. Then there is /sh/ and /ch/, which are difficult for her too, possibly because there is no sh sound in Spanish. Finally her confusion with /s/ and /z/ is again likely because of her native language.
While I believe that the UFLI lesson is a good base lesson to start with, I would make the following adjustments to the lesson plan to better match them to Marina’s current needs.
- As a warm up I would have Marina do some letter work to start the lesson. I would have her place letter tiles in alphabetical order and then sing or say the letters in order.This would reinforce her alphabet knowledge and begin preparing her brain for the phonics instruction to follow (Nieser & Cárdenas-Hagan, 2020).
- I would replace the irregular words section and include a comprehension activity instead. While I don’t think the irregular words review is a bad activity, I think that a comprehension activity would benefit Marina (Pollard-Durodola, 2020). I would do a vocabulary activity that is tied to my content lesson. A word map could be used that includes the Spanish translation to introduce the vocabulary term to Marina to help her make a stronger connection (Pollard-Durodola, 2020). I would move this activity to after the warm up though, so as not to interrupt the flow of the phonics lesson.
- Similarly, I would move phonemic awareness to after new concept but before word work. Again, this has to do with the flow and structure of the lesson and I don’t want Marina working with these phonemes and graphemes until I have introduced and explicitly taught the long vowel sound concept to them (Vargas et. al, 2021).
The following aspects of the UFLI lesson are ones that I would continue to include because they are aspects that match Marina’s current needs well.
- I believe that the new concept section of the lesson plan is done very well. This direct and explicit instruction will make things clear for Marina (Goldenberg, 2020).
- The articulation gesture is really good as well since it is using multisensory strategies that can help her make those phoneme-grapheme connections (Vargas et. al, 2021).
- The word work is excellent because it is multisensory. The use of manipulative letters can assist with linking input from eye, ear, and voice and help Marina learn and remember the A_E pattern (Nieser & Cárdenas-Hagan, 2020).
With the adjustments listed above, along with the components that are remaining, I believe that this would be a good lesson for Marina to continue to work on to improve her phonics skills.
References
Goldenberg, C. (2020). Reading wars, reading science, and English learners. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1).
Nieser, K., & Cárdenas-Hagan, E. (2020). Phonics Development Among English Learners. In Literacy Foundation for English Learners: A Comprehensive Guide to Evidence-Based Instruction (pp. 61–88). essay, Brookes Publishing.
Pollard-Durodola, S. D. (2020). Vocabulary Instruction Among English Learners. In Literacy Foundation for English Learners: A Comprehensive Guide to Evidence-Based Instruction (pp. 117–145). essay, Brookes Publishing.
Vargas, I., Hall, C., & Solari, E. (2021). Brick by Brick: Landmark Studies on Reading Development, Assessment, and Instruction for Students Who Are English Learners. The Reading League Journal, 37–41.