ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Teaching resources for supporting struggling readers and English language learners
Preface
Teachers have often heard that students don’t write well because they don’t read enough to know what good writing looks like. But the solution to writing problems may not be that simple. Regardless of whether students are struggling with reading and writing because of gaps in their education background or because they are in the language learning process, teachers should inform themselves about the issues so they can do right by their students. I want to look at research about pre-writing activities that are designed to help struggling students and those who are language learners with organizing their ideas. There are graphic organizers, thinking maps, and sentence starters that seem to benefit them as they plan and arrange a successful piece of writing. Pre-writing does not simply start with the act of brainstorming, inventing, or outlining. Often teachers, even experienced teachers, begin a writing assignment without enough preparation. Graphic organizers can only do so much. Teaching writing to struggling readers and English language learners requires that teachers understand the reading process, the writing process, and how second languages are learned. In my research on helping students to organize their thoughts and ideas before beginning a writing assignment, it became obvious that students who struggle to read, or students who are not yet fluent in English, have additional roadblocks to conquer before they can begin to organize and plan a writing task. These are some of the resources that I found helpful in studying about how to assist students with their writing.
Haley, Margaret and Patricia Rentz. "Applying SLA Research and Theory To Practice: What Can a Teacher Do? ." TESL-EJ 5.4 (2002): n. pag. Web. 20 Nov 2009. http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESl-EJ/ej20/a2.html
Teachers need to keep up on the research in second language acquisition (SLA) in order to help their students. The authors of this article review the current literature in SLA for the purposes of encouraging teachers to use the results of the research in their planning and delivery of lessons to L2s. They encourage teachers to recognize the part played by understanding of learner readiness. They also review the research on focus on form and the concept of ‘noticing’. There is a discussion on the pros and cons of some teaching methods. What they encourage teachers to do, it to try more than one style, and to eventually come up with what works best based on what they know about SLA and their students.
Hyland, Ken, and Polly Tse. "Is There an 'Academic Vocabulary'?" TESOL Quarterly. 41. (2007): 235-251. Print.
Vocabulary that helps students to express their ideas is necessary when asking students to write about specific topics. Introducing specific words before a reading or writing assignment will benefit students' understanding of a subject. Not everyone believes that vocabulary can be taught out of context, but this article addresses the value of academic word lists. It would be helpful for anyone planning to create or analyze a specialized word list for a specialized subject. The charts in the article are detailed and cover a lot of information. The most useful notion that this article provides is that there is no one academic word list that will address the needs of all students even within a given field. Teachers are encouraged to teach unique, frequent, and specialized words, but not to depend on a super list.
Kinnard, Carla. "Autobiographies: A 'Jigsaw Puzzle' Prewriting Strategy." Education World.com. 02 Nov. 2001, Web. 25 Nov 2009. http://www.education-world.com/a_tsl/archives/01-1/lesson0032.shtml
While looking up information about pre-writing activities I came upon a fun and easy lesson for introducing the concept of autobiography and for pre-writing and planning one.
This activity involves creating a jigsaw puzzle based on a student's own life story. The lesson begins with students reading an autobiography. This particular lesson uses an autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, but since the lesson is about writing and not about American history I would probably choose someone the students are more familiar with. It is a lesson that would be useful with struggling readers and English language learners because it addresses kinesthetic learning. Although it may seem like a childish activity, it will probably engage students more than a graphic organizer or other form of pre-writing that they’ve become familiar with. Many students who struggle with reading and with English benefit from the type of hands-on activity that this lesson incorporates. In addition to the jigsaw activity for the writing and pre-writing, it might be interesting to have students use their autobiographies with some desktop publishing and include graphics, timelines, or photos with their final published autobiographies.
Pattison, Darcy. Paper Lightning Prewriting Activities That Spark Creativity and Help Students Write Effectively . Fort Collins, CO: Cottonwood Press, 2008. Print.
In the book Paper Lightning, author Darcy Pattison has gathered and created multiple lesson s for pre-writing. She believes that before students can do any kind of writing assignment they should learn and practice multiple pre-writing activities that are designed to spark creativity. Her lessons are aligned with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) standards and recommendations for teaching writing. Students and teachers who become familiar with the writing assignments in the book should be comfortable with using strong words, details, oral story telling, and organizing for different types of writing.
There is a substantial amount of scaffolding that will help experienced teachers and new teachers. The activities will support students at all levels of reading and language competency. For examples, in teaching about oral story telling she explains that students will tell three differentstories before ultimately choosing one story to write. Before students write she provides suggestions for helping to guide students is choosing topics as well as notes for helping students listen to stories. The activities are fun, easy, and relevant so that all students should be able to produce a good piece of writing that they will be proud of. To see examples of lessons from the book check out the publisher's website:
http://www.cottonwoodpress.com/index.php/Writing/Paper-Lightning/Detailed-product-flyer.html
"Prewriting (Invention)." Purdue Online Writing Lab. 22 Jan 2009. Purdue University, Web. 12 Nov 2009.http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
Purdue University’s online writing lab (OWL) is useful for all kinds of writing issues for grades 7-12 and above. The pre-writing lesson is designed for students who need help getting started with a writing assignment. There are questions and examples of how to bridge the gap from being overwhelmed with your topic to being able to focus on a specific narrow idea.
An important link that will be helpful for struggling students and those who are English language learners is the link for English as a second language (ESL) which goes into detail about vocabulary, grammar, and functional elements of English. A student can go to the ESL link and be directed to his or her specific area of interest or difficulty. There are pages that will help explain subject-verb agreement, how to use count v. non-count nouns, and review of parts of speech. It’s unfortunate that this link is designated as ESL because it may keep non-ESL students from taking advantage of the many features about our language that are included there.
"READ 180." READ 180. 19 Nov 2009. Scholastic, Web. 19 Nov 2009.http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/read180/
This is the program that I've been using for the last five years. In addition to reading intervention for struggling readers, the program also contains elements of reading and writing that are designed for English Language Learners. There are reading comprehension strategies within every high interest workshop, grammar and mechanics practice, and writing practice. The writing activities begin with analysis of sample essays on similar topics as those that students are expected to be writing about. These examples serve to show students what a proper paragraph might look like. In my classroom, I also create several non-example paragraphs that are based on the most frequent types of errors I find in my students' writing. Yes, that means that every year I have to create new paragraphs because every year there are different issues that need to be addressed. This year, I am working with my intervention readers to help them brainstorm ideas to write about because I have noticed that they do not readily come up with ideas on their own. I choose various topics and we brainstorm together, then with partners, finally individually. It seems that once I offer up an idea or two, then one of the students will catch on, and before long it's a chorus of brainstorm ideas. I think they found it much easier to challenge themselves with this aspect of writing when they realized that I was NOT going to assign a writing homework for every single topic we brainstormed.
Even though READ 180 doesn't provide as many example and non-example writings as I would like to use, but it does show students how to brainstorm and how to organize their ideas into sentences with the use of sentence starters. When paragraphs are drafted there is also a clear and concise rubric that students use for their own self-evaluation and for evaluating partner writing too. When paragraphs are finished there are grammar and mechanics rules that students apply to the writing before they are ready to publish.
"Thinking Maps, Inc.." Thinking Maps. 18 Nov 2009. Thinking Maps, Inc., Web. 18 Nov 2009. http://www.thinkingmaps.com/
Thinking Maps, Inc. is based on brain research about how students best learn. The maps help students to lay out their ideas visually in ways that are consistent with how the brain works. Teachers use the Thinking Maps to introduce a particular type of thought process. Once a student learns a particular type of Thinking Map she can use that same map and thinking process for any type of writing in any subject, throughout their academic career. Unlike the typical graphic organizers that many teachers are familiar with, Thinking Maps are designed to promote independent thinking about a subject. Thinking Maps are created individually rather than as graphic organizer handouts so that students feel the freedom to expand their ideas "outside the box" of the usually available graphic organizers.
"Welcome to ReadWriteThink." Welcome to ReadWriteThink. 18 Nov 2009. NCTE, Web. 18 Nov 2009. http://www.readwritethink.org/
I like the site called ReadWriteThink which is a collection of lessons and materials by the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English). The ideas on this website can be used or adapted for regular classes, strategic intervention classes, special education, or English learners. Activities are as basic as interactive alphabet and phonics programs to familiar story boards and timelines to even more advanced links that a student might use for designing and organizing a persuasive argument.
"Writing Instruction for Struggling Readers." Resources for Differentiated Instruction. 2nd ed. Scholastic, 2005. Print.
This is a resource book for READ 180 teachers. In addition to the lessons and practice pages within the book there are several passages explaining the methods and rationales for the teaching of writing (and reading) to struggling readers and English language learners. This particular resource is dedicated to promoting more successful writing for students by providing explicit lessons in narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive writing, as well as some opportunity to work with functional writing, poetry, and research. A shorter section addresses the grammar, usage, and mechanics skills that students need to use when writing. Several writing prompts also give students the chance to practice on-demand or in-class writing that they will need for the high stakes assessments that they need to take in high school. Checklists and rubrics are also included for the various writing genres with samples of different levels of writing for students to analyze.
