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BEING INTENTIONAL AND PURPOSEFUL WHEN WORKING WITH ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS
Abstract
Serving English language learners (ELLs) has been a major focus of the Reading Recovery (RR) early literacy intervention since its inception in New Zealand and continues to be a focus in the United States. In 2017-18, in the United States, RR served more than 6,000 ELL students in 1st grade. A recent randomized control trial conducted over 4 years, with 6,888 students, of which 19% were ELL, concluded, The growth rate we observed in students who participated in Reading Recovery over approximately a five-month period was 131 percent of the national average rate for 1st-grade students. Moreover, these results were similar in two subgroups of interest to the i3 program: English Language Learners and students in rural schools. (May et al.,2016, Reading Recovery: An Evaluation of the Four-Year i3 Scale-Up, pg. 3). Teachers must be intentional and purposeful when planning for lessons and working with all students. For ELL students, this may include spending more time focusing on oral language development. This thoughtfulness may also include being aware of the idiosyncrasies in the English language, such as the lack of gender specific word endings, the curious nature of prepositions, and how the inflection of words can impact the meaning of a sentence. In this paper we explore the intentional techniques embedded in the framework of a RR lesson and demonstrate why they are important to the language acquisition process and overall literacy development of ELL students.
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References15
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