This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
My Students
Every year I get between 22 students in my classroom. They are all English Language Learners. Some speak Spanish as a second language because they have an indigenous background. All of the parents are working class and few of them have an education beyond high school. About 1/4th of the parents did not make it passed middle school and many are not fluent English speakers. About half of my students have did not attend pre-school and 3/4ths are below grade level when they come into my classroom.
Hispanics are more likely to drop out of school and less likely to graduate from a 4 year College.
How can my students change their world if they don't understand it? Most of my students are not reading or writing in English. Many do not have computers, board games or a shelf filled with books. Covid has left my students without the various resources available at school.
My Project
My incoming students are all learning to read in English. The books will be used during whole group instruction to help students analyze grammar and parts of speech.I have chosen titles and book levels that will help us study narrative structure, character study, explore nonfiction books and prepare for learning about science.
One activity that I will do after reading the books is to chose a sentence to provide practice for reading instruction and to deconstruct to help students understand the meaning.
Deconstructing sentences is a strategy that I have learned where a complex sentence is taken apart. The following sentence from the book Henry and Mudge "Then they looked at their street with no children." can be broken up to help students better understand what is happening. I would break it up into 3 parts. "Then they looked": we would talk about how this is happened after something else. "at their street": we would talk about how that means looking at everyone and everything that is on the street during a typical day. "with no children": meaning that other than Henry, no other children live in that street. We would then continue to analyze the parts of speech, spelling patterns and anything else that is relevant to the sentence.
With nonfiction books I can do vocabulary instruction such taking a word and analyzing its root and prefixes and suffixes to help them understand it. I can also have them find words related in meaning or spelling. For example, one of our science words is biomimicry. Through the reading of books with words such as biology or biography we can discuss the prefix. The root word mimic can be explained using the pictures in the book jungle animals and having the students mimic the animals with movements, sounds, etc.
Nearly all students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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