Cultivating Knowledge, Building Language: Literacy Instruction for English Learners in Elementary School
2016; National Council of Teachers of English; Volume: 93; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1943-2402
Autores Tópico(s)Education Systems and Policy
ResumoCultivating Knowledge, Building Language: Literacy Instruction for English Learners in Elementary School by Nonie K. Lesaux and Julie Russ Harris, Heinemann, 2015, 156 pp., ISBN 978-0-325-06250-1In this professional text, Lesaux and Harris outline how educators can deepen comprehension and learning through facilitating English Learners' (ELs) use of academic registers. book is grounded in educational statistics and knowledge about the discouraging achievements of English Learners in US schools; they also combat the common misunderstanding that every EL is a newcomer. Lesaux and Harris support their legitimate claims without allowing a deficit perspective to take hold of their work. They tell us, The two largest and fastest growing subpopulations of US ELs are students who immigrated before kindergarten and US-born children of immigrants (Capps et al., 2005)-they are not newcomers, enrolling as older children and adolescents (p. 2). They remind teachers that the ELs our schools are serving most frequently began their education in the United States, have not qualified for services, and have exited ESL programs without continued language support. authors use these remarks to awaken the educational community to the task of advocating for the learners who are in need of continued language support in the elementary grades; they emphasize and believe that building up academic vocabulary and conceptual knowledge [which] holds huge promise (p. 13).Lesaux and Harris make the case for redesigning our model of teaching literacy with both word reading and language development in mind using a third-grade classroom setting throughout the book. Ms. Parkin's room represents the many classrooms with children from an array of linguistically diverse backgrounds. Javier, a student in the class, summarizes how a seabird catches its prey with the words from the text. Although he offers a surface-level response during the guided-reading discussion, Ms. Parkin is attuned to Javier's misconception by his interpretation of the lifted phrase reaches the surface. Lesaux and Harris use the backdrop of this classroom to show how spending more time in developing oral and written language skills can be achieved by considering the language competencies of read-alouds. Moreover, they call for educators to consider how language demands differ in various texts such as leveled readers and trade books. As a result, we come to learn the importance of intentionality in teaching as demonstrated through vignettes in three classrooms focused on academic language- kindergarten, third grade, and sixth grade.Teachers are offered a brief overview of the relationship between oral language and academic language in Chapter 2; however, they receive a guided instructional approach or outline to instructional planning for ELs in Chapter 3. …
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