How
can we prepare ELL students to meet the demands of the Common Core
State Standards? It will be challenging. The new standards have a
strong emphasis on challenging texts with more complex language. Even
in math, the linguistic demands will be greater. There will be more
word problems, and students will need to be able to explain their
reasoning.
The
good news is that it can be done. In Washington D.C. ELL students
actually showed some small gains in math
as the district moved to tests aligned with the Common Core. While
they showed some slippage in reading scores, they did not experience
the dramatic drops that occurred for all student groups in other
areas as they moved to Common Core aligned tests.
What
needs to be done to help ELL students to succeed as we move to the
Common Core? It will be important to focus on direct instruction in
tier 2 words. But there is something that is even more important, and
gets very little attention. Students need to be taught how to gain
word knowledge from their reading. They should be able to sound out
unknown multisyllable words. Then they have to be able to infer the
meaning of a word from its context. These skills are essential. An
individual with a good vocabulary will know around fifty thousand
words. You will never be able to teach all of these words directly.
Here
is an example:
I
am longing
to get a pet kitten.
This is just the kind of language that an ELL student is likely to have trouble
understanding. They will think that they know the meaning of the word longing
because they know the meaning of the word long. But the idea of length makes
no sense in the context of the sentence. Students need to be walked through
sentences like this. Don't just tell them the meaning. Discuss what makes sense
in context. With my complete phonics program students are exposed to
vocabulary in context on a daily basis. Their word knowledge grows rapidly
because they gain the skills needed to grow their vocabulary with independent
reading.
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