Funding for this webcast is provided by the American Federation of Teachers.

Additional support comes from the National Council of La Raza

and from the United States Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.

Hello, I'm Delia Pompa. Welcome to the Colorín Colorado and Reading Rockets webcast series.

English language learners or ELLs are a growing population in classrooms throughout the country.

Teachers are often unsure about the best ways to help these children become good readers.

Today we're going to explore the challenges facing English language learners and their

teachers in grades four and six. Joining us is a Harvard researcher, Dr. Nonie Lesaux.

Nonie, we know many students face what we call the fourth grade slump, where kids are

sort of past learning to read and are now reading to learn. Is there such a thing as

the fourth grade slump and can you tell us a little bit about it?

Sure, thanks. There probably is a fourth grade slump, but the question is whether we're just

picking something up in fourth grade that's already been there for a lot of years for

a number of kids, and/or whether, in fact, there are differences in the comprehension

demands of the curriculum, and certainly that's a question. Mostly the way we want to think

about the slump is that we have K to three reading instruction and assessment set up

that really focuses much more on word reading than it does on comprehension, and even speed

of word reading. And so by fourth grade what we have are assessments of reading that are

mostly comprehension based, and so we start to pick up kids — many more kids with low

comprehension who may have had low comprehension for years before. The other piece that we

have by the fourth grade that may contribute to what we call the this slump is that we

have instruction — we have reading that cuts across a number of areas of instruction,

so reading is not just relegated to reading instruction but rather we need to have good

reading comprehension skills for math, for science, for other areas of the curriculum.

Well how does this transition — this fourth grade transition affect ELL learners or ELL

students differently than native language speakers?

It's probably not a whole lot different, but it's probably exacerbated, which is that if

they have — kids with lower vocabularies, more limited proficiency with the language

have more difficulty with comprehension, so we think of our ELLs when we think about the

increasing demands, comprehension demands of the fourth to sixth grade classrooms in

curricula. So it's probably just exacerbated for them, and now that we start to assess

it around fourth grade, we certainly see that it's problematic.

Well, we have a lot of newcomers in that age group. How does this whole transition affect

them?

Well, I think newcomers pose a special challenge in that they need both basic skills in English,

conversational skills in English, as well as the academic language of the curriculum

and print. So it's probably that we have more demands for language and good comprehension

on them than other ELLs.

You know we hear the term "academic language" a lot these days. What's the difference between

academic language and social language or conversational?

Right; yeah, it's an important distinction. And I think there are many ways to think about

it. But probably the most straightforward ways to think about it are really this notion

of the language of print, the language of text, and in that sense, we're talking about

more complex sentence structures than we'd use on a regular basis in daily conversation

— words that come up in the text that aren't necessarily used in daily conversation, so

we think about words like analyze, frequent, abstract, observe, the kinds of words we don't

see as much — we don't hear as much in day-to-day conversation. We also think about the multiple

meanings of many words. That's part of academic language. Do I know that there are many meanings

for different kinds of words? The word "made," for instance, has a number of meanings. So,

and we also think about function words in print that don't necessarily come up in social

or conversational English, functions words like "therefore," or "else," "however" — the

real language of print.

Well you talked a lot about vocabulary. Are there other specific examples of academic

language being different?

I think you could think about the sentence structures, so those are more complex, the

way text is written, the fact that with text what we also need is an understanding of the

reader and the author's intent. So to be a good comprehender we need to understand the

purpose and what it is that we're doing and all of that really contributes to academic

language.

Well, how does this academic language proficiency affect reading comprehension?

Well, what we have is academic language as a very strong predictor of one's reading comprehension

so that, in fact, good comprehenders tend to have very good academic language. They

tend to have a good grasp of the language. They tend to understand nuance sentence structures,

syntax that's more difficult than that which they hear in everyday conversation. And what

we get is in fact often what's assessed when we're looking at assessments of comprehension

but also of content area.

Well, you said good comprehenders are good academic language users. Does it work the

other way, too?

It may or may not, depending on the demands of the comprehension task.

This is a question I know lots of teachers want to know. And how long does it take to

develop academic language proficiency fully?

You know, that's a really — it's a common question. It's also a really difficult one

to answer. And it depends what we see as full academic language development, but it also

depends on instruction, so that we could accelerate academic language for a lot of kids, depending

on how much instruction they're getting. I know lots of people sort of throw around the

notion of three to seven years to develop full academic language proficiency. We have

a lot of kids who never become fully proficient with the academic language, native speakers

and English language learners, it's difficult. But it really depends on instruction, how

much opportunity to learn it they have had.

Well, if it depends on instruction, what are some effective ways to help students develop

academic language, especially for newcomers?

Right. I think, you know, the critical thing to remember is that some of the best work

on academic language is actually anchored in print, so whether it's with writing or

with reading, and it's a lot of discussion about the text, about the language of the

text, about one's ideas, connecting sentences, this kind of thing. So I think part of the

— part of the — one of the critical pieces is to think about it anchored in written activities

and lots of chances for discussion and for feedback, revising, rereading, summarizing,

this kind of thing.

Thanks, Nonie. If you'd like to download a list of useful academic words, please visit

www.colorincolorado.org. Now we're going to hear a student's perspective on learning English

as a second language. Meet fifth grader, Maricely.

Maricely lives in Hartford, Connecticut, but was born in Puerto Rico. See the flag?

This girl loves the spotlight, but that has not always been the case.

I was reading and then I came across a word I didn't know. And when I started saying it,

everybody starred laughing.

Maricely, she had trouble learning to read. She was learning in a second language. Could

you imagine learning to read Chinese or Greek? She moved from Puerto Rico when she was just

two. Her family speaks a little English, but everyone in the neighborhood and at home generally

speaks Spanish, and it's hard to practice her English.

It's hard to learn English, especially when your family speaks Spanish only. I didn't

know how to read or write English, and most of my friends would pass me a note and write

it in English. So when I went to read it, I didn't know.

One thing that confused Maricely was the same sounds being spelled in different ways. What'

that all about?

Christopher, it sounds like "f-e-r," but it's "p-h-e-r." And I would be like, it's too hard.

Things got so tough for Maricely, they decided she needed to repeat the fifth grade.

I was mad, and it was hard for me. I wanted to quit, but then I decided not to.

You go, Maricely! A lot of kids would give up, but not Maricely. She buckled down and

worked extra hard with her teachers.

The teachers always gave me a book, and I started reading that one. When I finished

it, I read it again. Then they give me one book harder and one harder, and they will

make me understand the English more.

Maricely also worked at home with her big sister Bette Marie.

It's hard, and at some points in time you feel like giving up, because maybe you think

it's not worth it. But it's worth everything. All the struggles and everything -- it's

going to be worth it.

Maricely thinks so, too.

I want to show them as I learn a second language. And here I am, talking in English, and so

can you.

And guess what? Next year, she will be heading to sixth grade, speaking and reading both

English and Spanish.

We can see Maricely is on the road to reading. But this isn't the case with all her peers.

Some are way behind and others are far ahead. A single classroom may have ELLs with many

different levels of English language proficiency and literacy development. Where does a teacher

begin in trying to address all these diversities, Nonie?

I think the teacher begins first with; we want to really value an understanding of that

diversity even within this population. There are incredible differences. And so I think

the first step is to really value grasping just how different these kids are, not just

in language and in reading, but in their own experiences and reasons why they came to the

country, and then relating that to the goals for instruction. How do these certain profiles

relate to the goals that I have for my instruction? What kinds of modifications are at my disposal?

What kinds of things do I want to accomplish that I think will be problematic for some

kids over others? So it's mostly at the planning stage that we want to think a lot about the

diversity within those kids. I think the other piece to think carefully about are the number

of native speakers in the classroom as well or kids who have fully developed their English

proficiency, because we know that peers as models is one of the best ways to learn language,

so that the more we can think about our groupings around language ability to promote and scaffold

language development of certain kids is a really important piece as well.

Well, how does the teacher draw on the student's own first language and literacy skills?

Well, I think that really depends entirely on just how well-developed those language

and literacy skills are for certain kids. There are situations in which one's first

language can be just a very strong asset, particularly one's literacy skills in their

first language. There's a lot about reading that is not language specific. Do I understand

why I'm reading this? Do I think about the author's intent? Do I know what information

I want to get from this? These are all kinds of questions and strategies that cut across

languages. So to the extent that teachers have a sense that kids have well-developed

literacy skills in their first language, that can certainly be an asset for instruction

and a way to leverage instruction.

Does prior schooling have a big impact?

Huge — prior schooling is probably the number one factor to be considering when we're thinking

about drawing on one's first language. First language may be well-developed conversationally,

but not academically. First language — oral language skills may be there, but not literacy

skills. All of these kinds of things need to be on the table when we're planning instruction.

If a child comes to you with a lot of prior knowledge or his own prior knowledge, how

does that compensate for a lack of English vocabulary or does it?

Well, it's a real asset in learning that second language. So if we any about vocabulary words,

not just as labels, but as concepts, so if I understand not just that the word — that

there is a word, dog, but that I understand that dog is an animal, that there are similar

animals, I'm starting to grasp a certain concept. Children with well-developed literacy skills

in vocabulary in their first language need new labels, but they don't necessarily need

new concepts a lot of the time. They may need new concepts as they move through the grades,

but upon arrival, there may be lots of concepts that they have and they just need new labels

in English.

Are there unique or specific ways teachers can activate that prior knowledge?

There are certain ways — part of it is that there's always this certain barrier with even

just proficiency in English. But certainly there are a number of ways to activate that

graphically, represented with graphics, there are — we can represent that in casual conversation.

We can have students do some work in their native language with native language support

materials with the idea that they can understand that we're going to then try to learn that

material in English, et cetera.

The role of oral proficiency is a role we've sort of gone back and forth about as educators.

I know a lot of teaches have this question. Is it necessary to wait for a child to have

a high level of oral proficiency in English or oral fluency in English, before you begin

reading instruction in English, or reading instruction?

Well, if this is an English only instructional environment, then I don't think we want to

be waiting at all for kids. That, in fact, we can't possibly teach kids the thousands

of words — the thousands of vocabulary words and the nuances of the language strictly by

oral conversation and academic discussion. So we know that particularly for native speakers,

reading is a very powerful tool to develop vocabulary, to give kids experience with language

and the structures of language and the syntax, and the same holds for English language learners.

So we wouldn't want to wait for any reading and writing instruction. It's probably going

to be a powerful way to continue to boost vocabulary and oral proficiency.