Hi there,
We have 80% ELL at our school; 87% of our school's population last year were native
Spanish speakers. Our school was brand new last year and I did a lot of research on
how best to serve them.
First, you should ABSOLUTELY have books in whatever language your ELLs speak at
home available to them, particularly the kind of books your emergent readers are
reading. Children take library books home and their parents read to them...they
cannot read to them if it's not in their language. About 1/4 of our books are in
Spanish or are bilingual, although the research said I should probably have closer
to 1/3 (I honestly had a hard time finding that many books in Spanish as a start-up
library), and about 30% of our check-outs last year were of these books. If I
could do it over again I would have focused more energy on the picture books/lower
level non-fiction as the upper grades don't seem to check out the Spanish books as
much, although we have lots of kids who are either very new to speaking English
(but read in Spanish) or are bilingual.
Learning/practicing reading is learning/practicing reading no matter what language
they're doing it in!
I have teachers who only let the kids check out 1 Spanish book at a time and as
long as they're with the kids to guide them I respect that, but if a kid came up to
the desk w/3 books in Spanish (and teacher wasn't there or didn't care) I would
never force him/her to go get English books. That's me. I also don't make 1st grade
readers check out 1st grade books (whatever "1st grade books" means). I do,
however, often suggest to my native English speakers that they not take a Spanish
book home (largely because no one will be able to read it to them at home), but I
never forbid any of them from checking out things they really want. Lots of times
kids say they like the pictures and I'm ok with that. I am not a restrictive type
of media specialist.
Our books are also intershelved - Spanish/bilingual books have an orange sticker.
This is the first thing they all learn their 1st day in the library.
A Word Wall is a great idea - this has helped both the ELLs and emergent
readers/writers be a lot more self-sufficient. Our Word Wall is pretty funny,
actually - I'm not at school right now but the words range from "Junie B.Jones" to
"wrestling" to "vampires."
As a school with a large ELL population we got a lot of training on working with
them - and basically the more visual you can be and the more ways in which you can
present an idea, the better. My kids love, love, love using computers and using the
Smartboard. In every lesson that I work on with a teacher I try to break down each
activity into clearly defined steps and give lots of examples of each step. These
are kind of obvious strategies but ones that are even more important with ELLs. If
we want the kids to make a slide show on zoo animals, we not only give them their
assignment sheet and then show them an example of the slide show, but then we all
make the slides together. Then, once everyone gets started I have no problem going
to individual kids and helping them look up their topic, read the screen to them,
walk them to where the book is, etc. We also do lots of pair or group work - the
information gathering/reading is done in groups, where each group has a strong
reader (who sometimes can translate into Spanish while reading) - then the project
is individually produced. Teachers are always with the groups, and lots of times
when we schedule I ask that the assistants come, too (for classes that have
assistants). If that can't happen I try to work it so my assistant can be handy.
All of these strategies worked well for me last year. I'd love to hear more ideas!
Adrienne Ehlert Bashista
Media Coordinator
Lead Technology Teacher
Virginia Cross Elementary School
234 Cross School Rd.
Siler City, NC 27344
agbashista@chatham.k12.nc.us
_____
From: Fitzpatrick, Sandy [mailto:sfitzpatrick@CASSVILLE.K12.MO.US]
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Sent: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:10:19 -0400
Subject: ELL best practices
As the ELL population in my school increases, I continue to ask myself how best to
serve these students. At the lower grades they sit quietly and listen to the books
I read, but I would like to engage them further. Older students seem unable to
participate in many of the assignments we work on and I don't know Spanish (which
is the language most of our students speak). These children are receiving ESL
services, of course, but are always with their baseroom classes for library time.
Should I be purchaseing books written in Spanish for these students or should I be
insisting they check out books in English only? Would love to hear your opinions
and what works for you. Thanks in advance.
Sandy Fitzpatrick
Media Specialist
Cassville Intermediate School
1501 Main
Cassville, MO 65625
417-847-5605
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