Great Writing Strategy for ELs!

We know that when teaching EL students we need to provide them with learning strategies. One writing strategy that has worked for me throughout the years is Hamburger Writing. It provides students with cues and visuals. They will be writing 5 sentence paragraphs (in primary grades) or 5 paragraph essays (for upper grades) in no time!


Top Bun: Write 1 sentence. State your topic. Color Code Brown.

Lettuce: Write 1 sentence that supports your topic sentence. This is detail sentence #1. Color Code Green.

Cheese: Write 1 more sentence that supports your topic sentence. This is detail sentence #2. Color Code Yellow.

Meat: Write another sentence that supports your topic. This is detail sentence #3. Color Code Black

Bottom Bun: Rewrite the sentence from your top bun. Color Code Brown

It has ALWAYS worked for me! I hope your students enjoy it, grasp it, and “take off” with their writing skills! When introducing Hamburger Writing, I would create a HUGE hamburger with butcher paper. We would model this technique several times before letting students work independently on their own hamburger. Color coding each condiment helps too.

FOUR PLANNING QUESTIONS

Four Planning Questions
~When planning for your lessons, ALWAYS ask yourself these questions:

1. What are the outcomes?
(What is my purpose?)

2. What steps will I take?
(How will I set up my lesson? I, We, They? Wait Time? Pacing? Will I give multiple opportunities to respond? How will I keep students engaged?)

3. How will I know if the learning
has occurred? (What will learning look like?)

4. What will I do if learning doesn’t happen? (Who/What/How/When will I explicitly and intensively reteach?)

Remarkable Retellings, Super Summaries

A Path to Comprehension
When you let students know that they'll be asked to tell you or their classmates—orally or in writing—“what happened in the story” or “what were the big ideas,” you'll help them connect with text and focus on making meaning. Plus, what they say or write gives you a quick way of assessing their developing comprehension skills.

Even your youngest students can participate. Ask emergent readers to tell you about items or events from a story, and then talk about putting the events in order. As they grow as readers and writers, children can be asked to retell a story first in pictures, then in writing, and then in their own words. By the middle or upper elementary grades, they can move on to summarizing.

Make a Map
During shared reading and read-alouds with your preschoolers and kindergartners, introduce the idea of sequence. When you reread a familiar book, pause every now and then, and say something like “Do you remember what comes next?” After reading, ask “Who can tell me how the story started? And then what happened?”

Now, create picture cards that correspond with the main events in the story. Hand a card to each of several children, and ask them to line up in the order that matches the story. You can also make multiple card sets so children can work in groups to lay them out in order.

Once children get used to the idea of sequence, it's time for them to dive in themselves. An Event Map will get them actively involved in shared reading, reinforce ideas of main events and sequence, and let them show you what they know through pictures and emergent writing.

Give a copy of the Event Map (page 63) to each student. After sharing a book several times, ask them to complete the map. At first, young learners can use pictures to show the events. Once they gain some experience, they can label the pictures (as shown in the illustration) and then move on to completing the map in writing.

(These ideas are adapted from Jill Hansen's book “Tell Me a Story”.)

A Marvelous Modification
Summarizing is a more complex task than retelling. Creating a formal summary usually involves reducing a text by about a third, writing a topic statement, eliminating redundant and unimportant details, and more. You can help students make the transition from retelling to summarizing by encouraging them to paraphrase.

In a retelling, students often rely on the author's words. With paraphrasing, they use their own words to tell or write about what happens in a text.

Model paraphrasing by reading aloud a portion of text and then launching into your own paraphrase with “OK, so here's what is going on in this part….” At some point, highlight a “word I don't think I know” or “something that doesn't seem quite right”—and show students how to go back to the text to figure things out.

In this way, students put things into words that they understand (thereby deepening their comprehension of the text) and begin to concentrate on monitoring their reading and taking action when things are unclear.

(See Sharon Kletzien's “Paraphrasing” in The Reading Teacher, September 2009, for more about this strategy, along with the related ReadWriteThink.org lesson plan.)


TEACHER TALK
Get them in a retelling/summarizing frame of mind by saying things like this:

If you thought the book was great and want your best friend to read it, how would you describe what it's about?

Who's the most important person in the story? What does the aughor say to make you know that?

Are there important words that jump out at you? What are they? Why are they important? What do they mean?

What's the main idea of this paragraph? On this page? In this book?




Moving to Main Ideas
To help your upper primary and intermediate students continue on the path toward summarizing and growing comprehension, try Somebody/Wanted/But/So (described in Valerie Ellery's Creating Strategic Readers).

Have each student fold a piece of paper in quarters. After reopening the folded paper, ask them to write the following headings in each of the four sections: Somebody, Wanted, But, So.

Using a story that they have read, students complete their charts by writing a statement under each heading:

Somebody—identify the main character

Wanted—describe the character's goal or motivation

But—describe a conflict that impedes the character

So—describe the conflict's resolution

Extend the activity by asking “How can you use these key ideas to give me a condensed version of the story?” Students can respond orally or in writing—and they'll be well on the way to becoming successful summarizers!


Digging Deeper

For more about retelling, paraphrasing, summarizing, and comprehension, including lots of additional activities, see these resources:

Valerie Ellery, Creating Strategic Readers: Techniques for Developing Competency in Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension, International Reading Association

Jill Hansen, “Tell Me a Story”: Developmentally Appropriate Retelling Strategies, International Reading Association

Sharon Kletzien, “Paraphrasing: An Effective Comprehension Strategy,” The Reading Teacher, September 2009

Sharon Kletzien, “I Used My Own Words! Paraphrasing Informational Texts,” ReadWriteThink.org (www readwritethink org classroom-resources lesson-plans used-wordsparaphrasing-informational-1177 html)

What is Concept Mapping ?

Concept mapping is a technique for representing knowledge in graphs. Knowledge graphs are networks of concepts.

Concept mapping can be done for for several purposes:

• to generate ideas (brain storming, etc.);
• to design a complex structure (long texts, hypermedia, large web sites, etc.);
• to communicate complex ideas;
• to aid learning by explicitly integrating new and old knowledge;
• to assess understanding or diagnose misunderstanding.

Concept maps are useful tools for beginning writing assignments because they offer an alternative to outlines. It is a great way for students to organize their thoughts. It gets them to "think about their thinking." These maps can also help teachers determine what revisions, additions, or deletions should be made to their instruction. They help teachers get a feel for students' prior knowledge and then allows students to make the connection. After several weeks of modeling, I believe this would be an excellent connected practice activity students can do with partners or groups.

Reading Kits Help Comprehension

Reading Kits are something really cool and easy that you can make for your kids. Even if your kids are good readers, these kits can really enhance your literacy instruction while making it lots of fun for your child! They can be used to boost vocabulary instruction, make note of clues during reading, help kids visualize things, and much more!

Reading Kits can include:
highlighters and highlighting tape
sticky notes
bookmarks
color markers
pens and pencils
index cards

Here are some quick ideas on how to use the reading kits:
Color Coded Highlighters can be used by your child to highlight words they don’t know or interesting passages that he/she likes. You can use a different color to go through and highlight vocab words you want your child to focus on, interesting characters, or sections of a chapter book that you’d like to discuss later. You can also do this with colored sticky notes if you don’t want to write in the book.

Sticky Notes can be used by your child to write questions or thoughts about what they are reading. These can be used for discussion later. You can use them to write down your own questions or pointers that you want your child to think about while they read certain sections of a book – just write them ahead of time and place them on the pages throughout the book.

Index Cards have lots of uses! Have your child write short sentences, phrases, or even pictures on the cards to summarize a paragraph or page. You can assign sections of a book for your child to write retells or reactions to something in the story (an event, character analyzation, a prediction, etc.).

Time Lines can also be made using index cards and sticky notes. Have your child make a time line of the events in a story/book (either with words or pictures or both). This really helps them with the comprehension skill of sequencing!

Reading Kits are really easy to put together, yet they can really make a difference in the way your child understands a book or text. Plus, they love to have their little “tools” while reading their book!

Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners
Lydia Breiseth

Comprehension is the goal of reading, but it can be the most difficult skill to master, especially for English language learners (ELLs). ELLs often have problems mastering science, math, or social studies concepts, for example, because they cannot comprehend the textbooks for these subjects.
ELLs at all levels of English proficiency and literacy development will benefit from improved comprehension skills, which allow them to

Read more accurately.
Follow a text or story more closely.
Identify important events and concepts in a text.
Master new concepts in their content-area classes.
Complete assignments and assessments.
Feel motivated to read in school and for pleasure.

There are a number of ways to build ELLs' comprehension skills. Often, standard strategies that teachers use in mainstream classrooms are a good starting point—they just need to be tweaked with ELLs' language and academic needs in mind. This article focuses on strategies that are part of three main approaches: building background knowledge, teaching vocabulary explicitly, and checking comprehension frequently.

1. Build background knowledge.

Draw on students' existing knowledge.
Students may already possess content knowledge that they cannot yet demonstrate in English. Look for opportunities to make associations between students' experiences and new content. Allow students to use their native language with peers for a quick brainstorm to discover what they know about a topic before presenting their ideas to the whole class.

Build students' background knowledge.
Students with limited or interrupted schooling may not have the same level of knowledge as their peers, especially when it comes to historical or cultural topics. When starting a new lesson, look for references that you may need to explicitly explain.

Take students on a tour of the text.
Each time you hand out a new textbook, take students on a "virtual tour." Show them different elements of the text, such as the table of contents and the glossary, and discuss how these sections can be helpful. Explain how the text is organized, pointing out bold print, chapter headings, and chapter summaries. Once students learn how to recognize these elements, they will be able to preview the text independently. Remember that students need to know how to use a tool in order for it to be helpful.

Use a "picture-walk."
You can use this strategy for fiction or nonfiction books. Walk through the book with the students, pointing out photographs, illustrations, and other graphic elements. Ask them what they notice about the pictures and how they think those details may relate to the story or content.

Use outlines to scaffold comprehension.
Provide a brief, simple outline of a reading assignment or an oral discussion in advance of a new lesson. This will help ELLs pick out the important information as they listen or read.

2. Teach vocabulary explicitly.

Focus on key vocabulary:
Choose the vocabulary that your students need to know in order to support their reading development and content-area learning. Provide student-friendly definitions for key vocabulary.
Include signal and directional words:
Remember that students may also need explicit instruction in signal or directional words ("because" and "explain"), in addition to key content vocabulary ("photosynthesis" and "evolution").

Use a "picture-walk" for vocabulary:
Once students know a new word's definition, ask them to connect those new words to the pictures they see in the text.

Teach students to actively engage with vocabulary:
Teach students to underline, highlight, make notes, and list unknown vocabulary words as they read.
Give students practice with new words:
Ensure that your students can
Define a word.
Recognize when to use that word.
Understand multiple meanings (such as the word "party").
Decode and spell that word.

Incorporate new words into discussions and activities.
For students to really know a word, they must use it—or they will lose it. Use new words in class discussions or outside of class, in other contexts such as on field trips. Give the students as many opportunities to use and master the new vocabulary as possible.

3. Check comprehension frequently.

Use informal comprehension checks:
To test students' ability to put materials in sequence, for example, print sentences from a section of the text on paper strips, mix the strips, and have students put them in order.

Test comprehension with student-friendly questions:
After reading, test students' comprehension with carefully crafted questions, using simple sentences and key vocabulary from the text. These questions can be at the:
Literal level (Why do the leaves turn red and yellow in the fall?)
Interpretive level (Why do you think it needs water?)
Applied level (How much water are you going to give it? Why?)

No matter what the students' proficiency level, ask questions that require higher-level thinking:
To probe for true comprehension, ask questions that require students to analyze, interpret, or explain what they have read, such as the following:
What ideas can you add to...?
Do you agree? Why or why not?
What might happen if...?
How do you think she felt...?

Use graphic organizers:
Graphic organizers allow ELLs to organize information and ideas efficiently without using much language. Different types include Venn diagrams, K-W-L charts, story maps, cause-and-effect charts, and time lines.
Provide students with many different ways to show what they know:
Drawings, graphs, oral interviews, posters, and portfolios are just a few ways that students can demonstrate understanding as they are beginning to develop their reading and writing skills in English.

Summarize:
Ask students to use the following strategies to summarize, orally or in writing, what they have read:
Retell what you read, but keep it short.
Include only important information.
Leave out less important details.
Use key words from the text.

It may be challenging to improve ELLs' comprehension skills, but it is well worth the extra effort to put them on the path to becoming successful readers.

Connected Practice/Literacy Centers

Children learn to read and write by having meaningful, authentic reading and writing experiences. In order for students to become expert readers and writers, they must have time to practice and apply what they are learning - reading and writing. Therefore, it is essential that the literacy-centered classroom provide time for students to read independently in self-selected books and to engage in self-initiated writing in literacy centers.

Centers should provide students with additional opportunities to practice and apply strategies and skills that have been taught. Center activities should connect to the components taught in the core program…they should grow out of what the teacher has done during whole group and small group instruction.

Multiple opportunities to practice words in a hands-on manner accelerates the accuracy and automaticity necessary for fluent reading.

Here are a few pictures of centers at work in our school!!!

Independent Reading

Research
The Effects of Independent Reading on Reading Achievement
Research clearly shows that the reading of meaningful, connected text results in improved reading achievement. In one of the most extensive studies of independent reading yet conducted, Anderson, Wilson, and Fielding (1988) investigated a broad array of activities and their relationship to reading achievement and growth in reading. They found that the amount of time students spent in independent reading was the best predictor of reading achievement and also the best predictor of the amount of gain in reading achievement made by students between second and fifth grade.

Among the many benefits of independent reading are the following:
Builds Fluency
Independent reading builds fluency. There is substantial evidence that unless students can accurately and effortlessly deal with the word-identification demands of reading, difficulties will result in comprehension and overall reading achievement.There is also evidence that unless children read substantial amounts of print, their reading will remain laborious and limited in effectiveness. Finally, evidence exists which shows that when students do read substantial amounts of text, their reading performance improves.
Increases Vocabulary
Independent reading leads to increased vocabulary development. One of the best-established relationships in the field of reading is the very significant relationship between vocabulary development and achievement in reading. There is also evidence that shows that independent reading is probably the major source of vocabulary acquisition beyond the beginning stages of learning to read. This same research shows that while the probability of acquiring the meaning of any specific word simply through reading it in the context in which it appears in independent reading materials is not high, students who read widely can learn the meanings of thousands of new words each year.
Builds Background
Independent reading builds background knowledge, or schema. Another extremely well-established research finding is that students' reading ability is dramatically influenced by the amount of interrelated information (schema) they have about the topic about which they are reading. By reading widely, students are exposed to diverse topics and information which they can then use in future reading.

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Body Coda Blending

Teaching Blending
Young children usually get their first taste of blending through rhyming. Rhyming is essentially blending a new onset to an old rime. Children should not be expected to produce rhymes until they have a great deal of experience recognizing rhymes. Listening to rhyming stories, reciting rhyming poetry, and singing rhyming songs should be daily activities in the early childhood classroom.
Children can first try making rhymes by blending a single onset to a variety of words. For example, they could play a Silly Sally game where they blend /s/ to the rime of each word. This might lead to sense (me, see; hand, sand) or nonsense (mouse, souse; fork, sork). Any phoneme, for example, the sound of the week, could become the onset in such a game (Silly Filly, Silly Milly, etc.).
Another simple prereading blending activity is Secret Code, a guessing game. The teacher could turn an illustrated word face down and name it in phonemes, e.g., /h/a/t/. When a student blends the phonemes and guesses the word, the teacher shows the picture. This game also works well with riddles, which don't require pictures. For example, the teacher could say, "I'm thinking of the animal Bo Peep lost. It's a /shee/ /p/." Secret Code is good blending practice because it works on blending alone without the complications of remembering correspondences.
Where blending becomes crucial is in decoding printed words from their spellings. To simplify blending with printed words, we need to rethink the structure of the syllable. One way to break down the syllable is into onset (everything before the vowel) and rime (the vowel and everything after it). The onset and the rime are parts of spoken syllables, not written. For example, street could be broken into /str/ and /eet/. The onset-rime break seems natural, but it is probably a special case of the salient vowel. The vowel is the loudest part of the syllable and the sound you can always stretch out. It is easy to break a syllable on either side of the loud vowel.
For blending, it is better to divide the syllable a different way. If we combine the onset with the vowel, we get the body of a syllable. Everything after the body is the coda. For example, in dream, /drea/ is the body of the syllable and /m/ is the coda.
There is an important payoff for this new terminology: Body-coda blending is easier than onset-rime blending. This is because onsets are often quite distorted during blending. For example, if we ask a child to blend d-ice, it is very difficult to pronounce /d/ without considerable distortion. Because /d/ involves the vocal cords, it takes some vowel to pronounce /d/ (usually a schwa /u/), and this artificial voicing interferes with blending in the actual vowel. However, there is no distortion of consonants after the vowel, i.e., in the coda. Thus, di-ce is a very easy blend.
In general, the easiest way to blend in decoding is body-coda, e.g., swee-t. Onset-rime blending (sw-eet) is usually harder, but at least there are only two parts to blend. Phoneme blending is harder still, because there may be 3, 4, 5, or 6 phonemes to blend in a single syllable. Sounding out and blending words in left to right order is usually not the best way to proceed. It is better, at least at first, to begin by sounding out the vowel. For example, with rag, focus first on pronouncing a as /a/. Then blend the onset to the vowel to get the body, e.g., /r/a/, /ra/. Last, blend the body to the coda, e.g., /ra/g/, rag.
One creative way to get children started is with a blending slide. Using an image or model of a playground slide, have the vowel (e.g., short e) climb to the top of the slide, where it calls for help, /e/, /e/. Bring up the onset (e.g., r) to make the body of the syllable (e.g., the letters re, pronounced with a short e). Place letter d at the bottom of the slide to catch re. Stretch the vowel in re until it hits d to make red. Repeat with a variety of bodies and codas to model and practice blending.