General Opening Session a Building Biliteracy Instruction, Programs, and Services Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan, Ed.D. Director, Valley Speech Language and Learning Center, Brownsville, TX July 27, 2015 relsouthwest.sedl.org @RELSouthwest This presentation was prepared under Contract ED-IES-12-C-0012 by Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest, administered by SEDL. The content of the presentation does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of IES or the U.S. Department of Education, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. 1
Agenda Introduction Demographics of ELs Literacy Development among ELs Instructional Considerations Intervention Studies Oracy and Vocabulary Development for ELs Closing 2
The Need English learners are fastest-growing school population Represent 400 different home languages Significant achievement gap between English learners and monolingual English speakers Must meet Common Core State Standards College and career readiness Educated workforce 3
Second Language Literacy Developing oracy and literacy in a second language is not a simple task Students are often required to Develop conversational and basic reading skills at the same time Quickly develop oral and written academic language skills to facilitate learning in all content areas 4
Degree of Transferability Depends upon Proficiency of native language skills Degree of overlap in the oral and written characteristics of the native and second language 5
Alphabetic Languages Use symbols (an alphabet) to represent sounds in speech and print Individual sounds, when printed, are represented by individual letters, combinations of letters Examples: English, Spanish, Russian 6
Alphabetic Language Orthographies Alphabetic languages differ in the number of ways to present a single sound in print. Transparent Opaque Languages that allow for fewer such mappings More one-to-one mapping of symbols to sounds Examples: Spanish, Russian One sound can be represented in many ways One letter or letter combination can be used to represent several sounds Example: English ee, ei, and ea in need, receive, and read letter a father, apple, name, banana 7
Alphabetic Language Reading Phonological awareness and phonics are important skills that support the development of word recognition skills. Phonological awareness is positively correlated across many languages, and the skills in this domain are similar across alphabetic languages (to varying degrees). 8
What We Know English learners need explicit, early, and intensive instruction in phonological awareness to build decoding skills. Roughly equal numbers of native and non-native English speakers encounter difficulties with word decoding. Many English learners develop word decoding skills equal to those of their peers in early elementary years. (Rivera et.al, 2008) 9
Five Core Areas of Literacy Instruction Important for non-english learners and English learners: Phonological awareness Phonics (graphophonemic knowledge) Fluency Vocabulary Comprehension (August et.al, 2006) 10
What We Know English learners early graphophonemic skills (that is, letter-sound correspondence and word reading) are often more developed than higher-order skills, such as spelling. Students who have difficulty developing phonics skills require extra instruction and support in this area. English learners with very early English-language skills will benefit from phonics instruction. 11
Relationship Between Early Spanish and English Skills.92 Spanish PA English PA.74.69.65.68 Spanish Word Reading English Word Reading.74 12
Connections from Spanish to English By the Numbers: 60 percent of English language is derived from Latin 30 percent of these words share cognates 29 sounds in Spanish 44 sounds in English 19 letter/sound correlations are direct transfers 6 letter/sound correlations are partial transfers 13
Connections from Spanish to English Students need explicit instruction in the connections. Teachers should have knowledge of the transfer points. Interventions should match language of instruction model. 14
Unique English Elements Provide additional structured instruction on elements known to be unique to English and not part of the student s native language Draw attention to unique elements and provide additional practice and application Provide speech training for students who are unable to produce certain sounds in the English language 15
Fitting Pieces to the Puzzle Capitalize on familiar letter-sound associations (for example, those with complete/partial overlap in Spanish and English) Explicitly teach unfamiliar letter-sound associations Explicitly teach unfamiliar letter-based phonemes Explicitly teach phonemes that do not exist in Spanish 16
Why Teach Phonemes? Questions for discussion in table groups and chat pods: What English phonemes do not exist in Spanish? Why is it important to teach these phonemes? 17
Because... Instructional Considerations Unfamiliar phonemes and graphemes make decoding and spelling difficult Important to familiarize students with patterns that do not exist in their native language but do in English Specific sounds and sound placement in words differ for different languages Helping students hear English sounds that do not exist or are not salient in their native language is beneficial 18
Intervention Studies: English Learners 19
Preventing Reading Difficulties Among Spanish-Speaking Students Interventions Lesson cycle Daily lessons (Vaughn, et al., 2006) 20
Instructional Design Integrated Strands Vocabulary and Concept Knowledge Phonemic Awareness Encoding Letter-Sound Recognition Word Recognition Repeated Connected Text Reading Comprehension Strategies 21
Results for Interventions Statistically significant differences in favor of Spanish Intervention treatment group for outcomes in Spanish. Time x Treatment Statistically significant differences in favor of English Intervention treatment group for outcomes in English. Time x Treatment (Vaughn, et al., 2006) 22
What We Learned: Instruction for At-Risk Readers Best Practices for English learners All new information is modeled (Model Lead Test) Repetitive language and instructional routines Students read, write, and practice new skills Students develop oral language and literacy Time to dialog with teachers and one another Modeling and mentoring 23
Oracy Development for English Learners: Read Aloud / Story Retell Procedure Elements of the procedure Selection of vocabulary words Questions that guide vocabulary selection Selection of text and read-aloud passages (Hickman et.al, 2004) See handout 24
Successful Vocabulary Instruction Steps for Explicit Instruction Say and write the word Provide definitions (with familiar terms) Discuss what is known about the word Provide examples (and non-examples) Engage in extended discussions/activities with the word Create sentences with the word (August, et al., 2009) 25
Successful Vocabulary Instruction: Example Steps for Explicit Instruction Say and write the word: delicious gigantic content Provide definitions (with familiar terms): Delicious means something tastes very good. Gigantic means something or someone is very big. Content means happy. (August, et al., 2009) 26
Successful Vocabulary Instruction: Example Steps for Explicit Instruction (cont.) Discuss what is known about the word Provide examples (and non-examples) Engage in extended discussions/activities with the word Create sentences with the word (August, et al., 2009) 27
Delicious Example Non- Example (Cardenas-Hagan, 2015) 28
Examples Gigantic Non-Examples (Cardenas-Hagan, 2015) 29
Content Example Non- Example (Cardenas-Hagan, 2015) 30
Engage in Extended Discussions With the Word Do you think spinach is delicious? Why or why not? Do you think a turtle is gigantic? Why or why not? Do you think the girl is content? Why or why not? (Cardenas-Hagan, 2015) 31
Glossaries 32
Monitoring Vocabulary Knowledge Questions for discussion in table groups and chat pods: How do you know if an English learner knows the meaning of a vocabulary word they use to create a sentence? Should you review vocabulary words after the students show that they know the word? Why or why not? 33
Questions 34