Reading in the Content Areas

     The chapter by Hinchman discussed several different strategies to work with ELLs in the classroom. One of the important themes was the idea of focusing on language in all content areas. Students need to learn key content vocabulary and the academic language to be able to communicate in that content area. Another strategy was the idea of "juicy sentences." This is an activity asking students to do a case study of sorts of a grammatically and linguistically complex sentence. This helps ELLs see examples of concepts and rules of the language and study them in detail. Finally, the authors discussed the importance of annotation. I definitely agree with the point the authors made about content-specific language. I think that often teachers take this to mean vocabulary only. This is important, but often different subjects have different conversation structures, or even different sentence structures. As an example, I am much better at English-related subjects than science. I...

     The first chapter by Beers talked about the importance of relationships with students, especially those who are struggling. The authors emphasizzed that teachers need to have high expectations for students, especially those who have high expectations for students, and not "dumb down" the curriculum for them. Instead, teachers should be activating students prior knowledge and connecting it to new content. This prior knowledge should not just be facts, but elements of students' lives and experiences they realte to. I think this concept is super important since it helps to spark interest, and can also help students understand new concepts. Even if something is confusing, if students can connect parts of the concept to something they understand, they are able to begin understanding the concept.      The authors also discussed "Thinking Maps," visual graphic organizers used for different purposes and language functions. I thought that these were great opti...