Homework Rationale

Entry #10

All homework should be meaningful.  Homework should be used as a means to practice skills already taught in the classroom, but where repeated practice will be necessary.  Homework can be used to apply knowledge and skills previously taught.  Also it can be used to research information that is needed for a future lesson.

Students should be told the reasons why homework and independent practice is beneficial to them, to increase motivation and sense of purpose. 

All students should be able to work on homework independently.  Therefore the homework should be clearly explained before it is taken home so that students know what is expected of them.  Homework expectations need to be differentiated to match the ability levels of students so that they are all able to be successful with the independent work.  Parents will need to interact with their child if this is the request of the teacher, for instance when emergent readers have to share books with their parents at home to develop reading skills.

English Language Learners will require accommodations to be made so that they are successful with homework.  These include making sure all directions are clear and short.  Give them time to ask questions and to receive further explanations.  Offer visual organizers to help record their work and therefore cut down on the amount of writing to produce.  Reduce the expectation of the student output, and match this output to their language proficiency level.  Reduce the task complexity as appropriate.  Increase the time to finish the homework.  Offer native language support. 

Students must receive feedback on how they got on with their homework.  The teacher should vary how the feedback is given.  This can be written feedback on the homework itself, stating positives and also one area to work on for next time.  Feedback should also be done orally from time to time, with a one to one between teacher and student.  This is also an opportunity for the teacher to check in with the student on attitudes to homework.  Peers should provide feedback and see the work of others.  Prior to this, students should receive coaching on how to give effective feedback to classmates.  Each week the teacher can fill in the dated section in the student’s homework folder, to show that homework was completed on time and received, and to show a brief comment that the parents will see.  To prevent a language barrier being a problem, the teacher can utilize a translation program, such as http://translate.google.com/  to communicate with parents about homework.

Teachers need to communicate to parents on their role in supporting their child to be successful with homework.  This includes ensuring their child has a dedicated space and resources, with no distractions for the time needed to get work completed.  Parents should help by supervising to ensure work is started and finished, provide prompts as needed, and give feedback to finished homework.  Encourage parents to use their native language to discuss homework so that explanations are detailed.  This can be detailed in the homework policy.

Teachers should provide a homework policy to parents and students at the start of each year.  It should include details about the purposes of homework for the grade level, expectations, the amount of homework that will be given, types of homework to expect, guidelines for the amount of time to spend on homework, consequences for not doing homework, and ways parents can support.  Translated copies should be provided in families’ home languages.  Parents should know that if there is a problem with their child completing homework, for any reason, then they should communicate this to the teacher.  At the start of the year it is also useful to give out the Checklist for Helping Your Child with Homework (U.S. Dept. of Ed., 2005), as part of the homework policy, which will emphasize to parents their role in supporting their child with homework, and will show the teacher’s expectations.  This can be downloaded from: http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/20476/

References

Hill J.D. & Flynn K.M. (2006).  Classroom instruction that works with English language learners.  Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

U.S. Department of Education (2005).  Homework: The basics.  Retrieved from: http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/20469/

U.S. Department of Education (2005).  Checklist for helping your child with homework.  Retrieved from: http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/20476/

Supportive and Challenging Features for ELLs in Fiction and Nonfiction Texts

Entry #9

Genre	Text Examples for kindergarten	Supportive Features for ELLs	Challenging Features for ELLs
Fiction	MONDO leveled reader Picture book Poetry	Language is kept simple. Uses high frequency words. Decodable words. Picture supports. Repetitive sentence structures that are gradually increased to more varied sentence structures. Picture supports. Vocabulary presented in a motivating context. Use as a mentor text to support activities to practice vocabulary from the text. Rhyming words help with phonemic awareness, onset and rhyme, and spelling patterns.	May be lack of background knowledge. Print concepts (depending on language distance – e.g. Chinese or Japanese). May be lots of new vocabulary presented at one time.  Teacher may need to support by reading slower, gesturing and reducing complexity of language. Complex sentence structures. May include cultural differences. Turns of phrase and expressions used in English. Past tense verbs. Lack of pictures. Some poems may be more abstract.
Nonfiction	National Geographic Young Explorers magazine Dorling Kindersley Readers (leveled)	Engaging photographs to illustrate facts. Clear headings and sub-headings to state purpose. Labels and captions on many pictures. Fact boxes with one single fact. Clear page layout. Labeled diagrams Contents page Glossary Index Limited text. Leveled text. Photographs to illustrate vocabulary. Headings	Challenging vocabulary. Variety of sentence structure. Challenging vocabulary. Variety of sentence structure.

                                                                        http://www.mondopub.com/

 

                                                                        http://ngexplorer.cengage.com/ngyoungexplorer/

 

                                       http://www.dk.com/us/level-1-beginning-to-read/

Sheltered Literacy Lesson Strategies

Entry #8

Strategies used in the sheltered lesson:

·         Lesson goal was clearly stated and was also written on the chart paper.

·         Students asked to recall reading strategies they knew, before reading.

·         Vocabulary from the text was discussed in different ways before reading.  Pictures were shown where these could illustrate a word, (e.g. bouquet); synonyms were given; a story example was used to give students the understanding of the word ‘resent’.

·         Connected to students’ culture by asking them to sing the Spanish song from the book.

·         Teacher read text aloud slowly and clearly.

·         During teacher/student discussions about comprehension, the teacher kept referring to the strategies that they were using and how this was beneficial to their understanding.

·         Teacher gave students clues from the author to help them infer meaning.

·         Teacher asked a variety of questions throughout the discussion.

·         Wait time.

·         Students applied their knowledge of the three reading strategies by identifying parts of the story where they used each strategy, and recording this on post-it notes.

·         Reading and writing connection: writing about sections of the story that matched with a comprehension strategy.

·         Use of the visualizer to show the text and highlight sections for discussion.

Comments

The teacher clearly stated the objective at the start of the lesson so that this was explicit to the class.  She activated their background knowledge of comprehension strategies before the lesson started by asked them to recall strategies they have used before, which really got them focused on these strategies.  She did an excellent job of front loading the unfamiliar vocabulary in a variety of ways to best aid student understanding of these new words.   The teacher sheltered the text by reading aloud to the class and stopping at phrases that needed discussion.  There were opportunities for teacher and students to discuss the text together to fully understand inferences.  The teacher did a good job at leading and directing this discussion and by asking a variety of questions to get the students thinking.  Many of the questions involved students using higher level thinking to engage with the text.  From the short video clips we saw, it seemed that the teacher was asking all the questions and the teacher did most of the talking at these times.  I would have liked to have seen more students involved at the discussion time, and trying to draw in some of the quieter students to ask their thoughts.  I would be interested to have seen the rest of the lesson components to know if the students had time to discuss the text with a partner as they read independently.  It is especially important for ELL students to have opportunities to talk, use the language of the text and to clarify their thinking about these inferences.  Using the post-it notes was a good idea for assessment to see how students were using each strategy to think about the text.  As the teacher said, those ‘I’m confused’ post-its make a productive start to the next lesson.  I wondered why the teacher did not choose inference as a strategy to put on one of the post-it notes, because this was the objective of the lesson.