Literacy for the Diverse Learner: 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.