Module 5: Instructional Challenge

As your school year starts, you realize that you have three ELLs who are newcomers to the United States. Discuss how a comprehensive literacy program addresses their needs, drawing attention to specific components of the framework that are particularly relevant. Then discuss any additional scaffolding you would offer to support these children's needs. 

The English language is hard to learn because there are more sounds than there are letters, so it would be hard to teach students every letter and its sound and expect them to be able to sound out these letters in isolated words. The comprehensive approach allows for phonics to be taught through the combination of reading and writing workshops. Students are more likely to remember “chunks” of words, which means we should give the ELL students as much access to the English language as possible through guided readings, read-alouds, and sustained reading, as well as their writing counterpart. Reading more and more books allows for students to recognize words, but it also allows the students to see various letter-sound relationships. ELL students need to see these phonics rules in context in order to fully understand them.

I think the best way to provide scaffolding is through various reading and writing conferences, as well as literacy groups and shared reading. With literacy groups and shared reading, the students would be given the opportunity to hear the text read while being able to see the words their own text, and then be able to reread the same text. When the students are able to read and reread the same text they will become more familiar with the content and words which will begin to raise their confidence. The conferences will allow me to see where the student thinks he/she is having an issue so that I can talk them through it or show/teach them in another manner. All students learn so differently that it is essential to have these conferences in order to cater to the specific students’ needs.