Esl Reading Strategies

The biggest struggle I see on my current campus, which is primarily bilingual, is that my teachers are unprepared and lack the knowledge of how to teach English Language Learners. Most of them are phenomenal monolingual teachers, but do not know how to differentiate their teaching for ELL students. So, in hopes of finding strategies and techniques that can be implemented in my Bilingual and ELL classrooms, I selected Reading Strategies for my Literature Review topic. Reading the articles I found both validated the information and strategies I have been sharing with my teachers, as well as enlightened me with new and exciting ideas. The website uteach.utexas.edu states, “One difficulty that many beginning teachers consistently discuss …show more content…
Comprehension is something that all students can struggle with, but it is even harder for ELL’s. If the student is a beginning English learner, how will he even begin to understand what is being read to him in English. The first step in reading comprehension for ELL students is to build background knowledge. Students may already have knowledge of the subject in the book or read aloud in their home language, but are unable to make the connections to the text in English. The teacher should allow students to make make connections between their experiences and new content in their native language with peers. Pair students that are at a lower level of language proficiency with a student of a higher proficiency. This will allow students to help each other make connections, possibly in both …show more content…
Every time I begin a new book in my guided reading groups, we always take a picture walk and use the pictures as our guide for understanding what will happen in the story. Pictures are a universal language and look at and assisting the students to make connections to the pictures will help them understand the text before the even read it. Breiseth states in her article Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners, “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.” After taking a picture walk, show the students parts of the book, like the table of contents and the glossary, and talk about how these parts of the book can assist in their