Juli Kendall's Weekly
Reading Workshop Journal
A MiddleWeb Listserv Project
Self-selected members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List are joining
together to explore the Reading Workshop and other ideas about supporting
young adolescent readers. Juli Kendall, a reading teacher/coach in Long
Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion. Juli is also keeping
a weekly journal of her own Reading Workshop initiative. Find out more about
our project at our Reading Workshop homepage.
You'll find Juli's background article here.
Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues are embedded
in these journals. Most often, when you click on them, a PDF file will begin
to download. You'll find a list of the downloads here.
Week #36
English-Language Learners
and the Reading Workshop
"What kind of readers are these?" visitors ask, sometimes indignantly.
"Just what sort of a class is this?"
"It's so simple," I want to respond. "A classroom, 25 students,
some books. Reading all the time. That's it." Except that simple is
never quite like that. Simple is not in the cards.
The idea, I want to explain, was to shake things up, to strive for reading
with understanding, to strive for a viable Reading Workshop where kids are
learning English. To not, in short, do business as usual.
It doesn't take more than seconds in the presence of our kids to feel the
intensity with which they face the challenges of learning English while
learning to read with understanding. They are, in the best sense, kids who
are driving everything -- the curriculum, their learning, their success,
themselves most of all -- to go further than they have before.
This year 25 of them have been in our Reading Workshop. And the result is
a Reading Workshop, as wonderful as it is unusual, a Workshop that expands
the concept to its outer limits and makes us believe.
The promise of middle school
But it's not just a bed of roses. In Learning and Not Learning English,
Guadalupe Valdés has some sobering words for those of us who teach
English-language learners.
The teaching of English to immigrant students, rather than being
a straight-forward and unproblematic practice, is a contested site in which
there is a struggle about the role and the future of immigrants in our society.
As Americans, we can decide not to address these larger issues and to proceed
with our discussions about how many years to teach English. We can pretend
that programs, methodologies, and pedagogies are entirely neutral, and we
can refuse to examine ESL ghettos, poor teaching, and the isolation of English-language
learners in our educational institutions.
If what we want, on the other hand, is to develop the full intellectual
potential of all our citizens and future citizens, the challenge before
us is enormous. We must plan carefully, and we must work quickly. (p. 159)
For our 25 readers, 13 girls and 12 boys, the promise is middle school.
Readers of my journal will recall that each of these students was selected
because they failed to meet the district's sixth-grade promotion standard
-- and were held back this year -- or because they were fifth graders at
high risk of failing. [See Juli's background article.]
Since the administrative team's decisions are based on an absolute standard,
the amount of progress each student has made does not enter into the discussion.
Based on last week's "data meeting" between their regular teacher
and the administrative support team, the projection is that all but two
will move on next year. So, there's a bittersweet taste in my mouth. I want
them all to be ready to leave.
"But I'm afraid . . ."
"Can you read with me today?" Anna asked. "I really need
to read with you." Early last week as our assessments went into high
gear in Reading Workshop, Anna, one of the students "expected"
to stay another year, called me over during Independent Reading. Busy with
all the important things I had to do, I reassured her that we would read
"tomorrow." Lowering her head as she listened to me, she whispered
these unforgettable words: "But I'm afraid that I'm not going to make
it if we don't read every day." And so, ashamed, I dropped everything
that I had thought was important and made the time to read with her.
Ramon was different. Constantly asking to take another benchmark reading
assessment, Ramon, whose reading level approached the middle fifth grade
earlier this spring, was "accidentally" given a benchmark for
the "end of fifth grade-fiction." Oh well, so much for worrying,
Ramon passed with flying colors. Remembering how he had not passed an end
of third grade benchmark earlier in the year, I congratulated him. "Oh,
it's nothing," he said quietly.
"Listen to what I decided to do," Esmé confided to me.
"I'm inspiring Melissa to read Just Right books. We're going to read
the same books at home every night and then discuss them at our morning
break during Reading Workshop." Esmé, who has passed her reading
benchmarks, has taken on the challenge of helping her friend, Melissa, who
is "oh, so close" to passing. She chose the word "inspiring,"
and I totally agree with her.
Succeeding with English-language learners
Our Reading Workshop has made a difference for our students and word of
their success has spread, but the research on teaching English-language
learners to read with understanding is still a little sketchy. Educating
Language Minority Children, edited by Diane August and Kenji Hakuta,
makes recommendations that may surprise some in education.
Skilled readers are capable of reading with understanding in
part because the component processes-- letter recognition, word recognition,
access to word meaning, syntactic pursing of the sentence -- are fast and
efficient. Those who have poor skills in word recognition can improve their
comprehension by employing strategies such as reading the whole text for
gist; self-monitoring for understanding; and using cues from title, pictures,
heading, and the like.
Explicit instruction in comprehension strategies such as prediction, summarization,
and questioning -- for example, the widely used "reciprocal teaching"
(Palinscar and Brown) or Bereiter and Bird's think-aloud method -- has been
shown to be useful with poor first-language readers, and some evidence suggests
it would also be useful with second-language readers who have comprehension
difficulties." (Educating Language Minority Children, p. 25)
In addition to these recommendations for explicit instruction in comprehension
strategies, there are additional suggestions; one which calls for the use
of "instructional conversation" to build higher levels of understanding.
This discussion of the value of extended dialogue is reminiscent of Improving
Literary Understanding Through Classroom Conversation from CELA
and The Art of Teaching Reading, both of which encourage the use
of conversation to build understandings from reading.
One method of providing opportunity for extended dialogue is
the "instructional conversation" --discussion based lessons focused
on an idea or concept that has both educational value and meaning and reference
for students. The teacher encourages students to express their ideas either
orally or in writing not just to the teacher, but also to classmates, and
guides them to increasingly sophisticated levels of understanding."
(Educating Language Minority Children, p. 81)
Realizing the importance of studying what works with English language learners,
CELA has published Literacy Acquisition Through Literature, an intriguing
research report.
In recent years, we have begun to focus on classes of linguistically
and culturally diverse students, studying ways in which literature can support
students' acquisition of literacy using their knowledge of their first language,
literature, and culture as leverage toward increased literacy. (Jiminez,
1995; Langer, 1990). Every student has a storehouse of literature potentially
available to call upon. This may include religious, cultural, family, or
friendship tales, traditions, or lore-formal or informal stories shared
and learned with others. (Literacy Acquisition Through Literature,
p. 1)
They began this work with some "underlying assumptions about literacy
and literature education" (p. 1-2) that evolved over the last 20 years.
Reflecting back on our Reading Workshop this year, I see evidence of these
assumptions in our students' literacy development.
1. Literacy learning is dependent upon the uses and forms of
literacy that people in particular cultures and social traditions deem valuable.
Thus, connection to the community is critical.
2. Second language learners use their knowledge of their first language
and culture (as well as their second) to help them understand and communicate.
3. Students learn best when they are engaged in full activities instead
of exercises, activities that they themselves find meaningful. When students
engage in such literacy activities, with support from others, they eventually
learn how to "do literacy" on their own.
4. Students learn best by integrating new knowledge into what they already
know, and new skills into routines they already know how to perform. Second
language learners know some of their own language and conventions, and some
ways to make them work.
5. Because it taps what they know and who they are, literature is a particularly
inviting context for learning both a second language and literacy.
Tales from Home, Cuentos de Mi Herencia, the book that was
developed from this project, is full of great student- authored reading
selections. In our Reading Workshop, we're using them for Shared Reading
(Journal #28). Here's a brief story titled "The
Horrible Vacation" (p. 15), reproduced here with CELA's permission.
This was a time, in the Dominican Republic, when my friend Alexandra
had a tragic experience. She was on vacation from school in New York, and
her father decided to take her to the Dominican Republic. Alexandra was
very excited because she would be seeing her favorite aunt.
One night they went to have dinner at her aunt's house. They had not seen
each other for a long time so they were all very happy to finally be with
each other.
Alexandra's aunt's husband never bathed without hot water. The aunt's girlfriend
put a huge pot of water on the stove to boil, for the husband. Alexandra's
father began to argue with his sister. He was very upset. And he went into
the kitchen and kicked the stove. When the stove shook, the pot of water
turned over and, as it was about to fall all over Alexandra, her aunt pushed
her away and so it fell on the girl's arm. The stupidity of it all was that
Alexandra's father insisted that she put her arm into cold water and she
began to turn purple. And instead of taking her to the hospital, he began
beating his sister and blaming her for the accident. He screamed that she
had been boiling the water for hours and had not tended to it.
While all this was going on, Alexandra was dying. Finally, she was taken
to a hospital, where she stayed for two weeks. And Alexandra's father felt
anguish for what he had done, and all for a few drinks. Finally, he admitted
that had he not been drinking the accident would have never occurred. This
lesson served him well, as he never drank again.
If you'd like to see more of these student stories, you'll find information
about ordering Tales from Home in the Literacy and Culture section
of CELA's publications
page.
Leti's Update
Earlier this month, we learned the last of the reading strategies from
Mosaic of Thought and Strategies That Work. Now, on a daily
basis, we're working to integrate their use in our Reading Workshop. Here's
how Leti integrated the reading strategies with the above story from Tales
from Home, Cuentos de Mi Herencia.
Before we used "The Horrible Vacation" as a Shared Reading, Leti
predicted, "This will be about somebody who lives in the United
States and I think it's about a bad luck vacation."
As we read, she made two text-to-self connections. Reading that the
author, Raquel Martinez, came to the United States in "1990" reminded
her that she was born that same year. In the section, which talked about
the author's favorite aunt, her own special aunt, Lupe, came to mind.
During our reading, she wrote down two questions:
Why did he blame his sister for the accident?
Where did he drink?
She also identified three vocabulary words she wanted to clarify.
tragic-"when my friend Alexandra had a tragic accident"
occurred-"had he not been drinking the accident would never have occurred"
anguish-"And Alexandra's father felt anguish for what he had done"
After reading, as our class discussed the story, she inferred that
Alexandra's father had not wanted to blame himself for the accident because
he didn't want to go to jail. She even drew a great visualization
of what it might have looked like when Alexandra's father kicked the stove.
Talk about engaged readers! The kids in our Reading Workshop can't put these
stories down. With excited readers busily integrating reading strategies,
I can see it all pulling together.
Editor's note: Juli writes us that Leti "passed all her benchmarks
with flying colors on Wednesday. What a victory!"
See Juli's May/June curriculum map
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