Chapter 7 - Literacy Development in CALLA
Imagine the challenges that ELL students feel trying to learn a second language such as English. First and foremost in my opinion, learning English is the most complicated language to learn, not socially speaking but academically. So how does one teach literacy in a CALLA classroom? Educator's must explore various ways to do the following: identifying students' literacy needs, be mindful of selecting materials, read aloud to students, use student's background knowledge, and continue to develop vocabulary (Chamot, 2009). These are just various ways as there are many mentioned in The CALLA Handbook. This chapter has provided an in-depth knowledge of providing educators various strategies in teaching literacy in a CALLA classroom.
Building the joy of literacy allows students to various literature genre's. What a joy to witness students, most especially ELL students pick up a book, smile and then go off in a world of one's imagination.
QUOTE:
"It is not what is poured into a student that counts but what is planted. - Linda Conway
Learning is like a rainbow of colors. Not one color fits one learner. - Kathleen Palomo
Chapter 7 and 8 share great similarities. The Literacy is probably the single most important aspect of teaching ELL. I appreciate her use of "assessing and building background knowledge." It helped me to understand how to build a background or a foundation to assist in understanding concepts. I think that as soon as teachers teach a foundation that everyone in the class understands, especially the ELL then it really is scaffolding, and the "building" becomes easier, especially if you are able to unravel and revisit some of those foundations underneath that new concept.
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