Teaching Reading to CLD Students: Strategies and Interventions

Introduction: CLD Students in American Schools

American public schools are experiencing dramatic demographic change driven by the country's immigration peak — the highest in the nation's history. This is happening at a time when American schools face their highest-ever accountability demands for student academic performance. The country's cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity is reflected in the families and students populating K–12 classrooms. It is therefore essential that teachers prepare to meet the diverse linguistic, developmental, educational, and cultural needs of these students so they can learn and develop optimally.

Today, more than ever, teachers face the challenge of how best to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. In effect, every educator today is an ESL/ELL teacher. This paper examines one dimension of CLD students' needs — specifically reading — and explores how teachers can help these students make meaningful progress in both the near and long term.

CLD Students' Learning Needs

CLD students typically struggle with English reading because they lack second-language vocabulary or are unable to make connections due to cultural differences between the curriculum and their own backgrounds. When a student also has a disability, these challenges are compounded further. It is therefore important for teachers to assess their instructional methods, their teaching approaches, and the composition of their classroom populations to determine whether a more culturally responsive teaching technique is needed. Taking this step ensures not only that students' educational needs are met, but also that their struggles do not result in inappropriate placement in special education programs (Alford, 2001).

Proficient student readers differ from less proficient ones in several important ways. They employ a variety of reading comprehension strategies in both English and their native language, they draw on prior knowledge, and they tend to have larger vocabularies. CLD struggling readers, by contrast, lack these three features and consequently experience persistent difficulties overcoming reading challenges, resulting in lower comprehension of texts (Alford, 2001).

Compared with native English readers, CLD struggling learners approach reading differently. A struggling CLD reader is more likely to focus on the meaning of individual words and to employ strategies such as translating text from English into their native language, attempting to transfer information across languages, and identifying cognates. Because English reading is grounded in familiarity with the cultural and linguistic conventions of the language, CLD students find it difficult to make meaningful connections between their background knowledge and the vocabulary in the texts they read. Since they cannot connect prior knowledge to the text, they tend to rely on unproductive strategies that, in turn, further impede their reading comprehension (Alford, 2001).

Teachers can help struggling CLD readers become more successful in English reading by deploying integral and effective instructional practices designed specifically for these students. It is essential that teachers, learning environments, and instructional approaches be effective and culturally responsive, as these are critical elements of CLD student success. Such an approach can help develop students' prior knowledge, cultural identity, motivation, interests, and home language. It also involves validating and valuing students' bilingualism and multiculturalism as positive assets, and building on what they bring to the classroom rather than assuming they arrive without resources (Alford, 2001).

Components of Reading Instruction

When designing reading instruction, teachers must consider all of the important components that contribute to reading development. These components are outlined below.

Oral Language Development

This reading instruction component is especially important for CLD students because it links reading and writing, and also bridges the student's first and second languages.

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is an important element for struggling readers seeking to improve their reading skills because it gives students the ability not only to hear words but also to manipulate their sounds in speech. This component also encompasses teaching approaches such as READ WELL, a systematic program comprising 38 units, with each unit covered across lessons spread over three to four days. Depending on the complexity and difficulty of the text, students can practice with leveled texts with teacher support or independently, progressing at their own rate while learning explicit decoding strategies. The READ WELL program also incorporates comprehension assessments and activities (Boyd-Batstone, 2004).

Vocabulary

The vocabulary component of reading instruction should include instruction in prefixes and suffixes, key vocabulary, figurative language and idioms, context clues, and the use of dictionaries and glossaries. It is important for teachers to preview new texts to identify potentially problematic vocabulary and to address that vocabulary before students read the text, as this can significantly improve reading success (Boyd-Batstone, 2004).

Fluency

Reading fluency refers to how accurately and quickly a student is able to read text. CLD students struggling with reading need to practice both silently and orally in order to build their fluent reading ability. They also benefit from hearing what fluent reading sounds like. Students can practice without the pressure of being in the spotlight through books on tape, shared reading, and choral reading with the teacher.

The READ NATURALLY program is particularly useful for building fluency. After assessing students to determine their fluency level, a story matched to their reading level is selected. Students make predictions and write about their prior knowledge of the topic, then time their reading for one minute (Boyd-Batstone, 2004). Subsequently, students read the story for one minute, marking any words they find difficult, then count and record the number of words read correctly on a graph. The teacher models fluent reading of the same text twice, after which students read the text again until they reach a predefined fluency goal. Finally, students respond to comprehension questions, write a retell, and reread the story aloud to the teacher for one final timed minute. The teacher listens for expression and accuracy to determine whether the goal has been met; if not, the process is repeated.

Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is the ultimate goal of learning to read and is of central importance for struggling CLD readers. Teachers must explicitly teach comprehension strategies, including the use of graphic organizers, making predictions, modeling strategies, identifying the main idea, monitoring understanding and knowing what to do when meaning breaks down, summarizing, and generating questions. These techniques and interventions can help struggling readers engage more successfully with texts (Boyd-Batstone, 2004).

Motivation

Teachers must actively inspire and motivate CLD students who struggle with reading, because without motivation, students will continue to fall behind. Effective motivational strategies include creating more opportunities for social interaction; providing tasks that are as close to real-world situations as possible; allowing students to choose their own reading materials; helping students learn and apply reading strategies; offering meaningful, engaging, and interesting tasks; providing instruction at students' reading levels to increase the likelihood of success; and building a home–school partnership by involving parents in their children's education (Boyd-Batstone, 2004).

Conclusion and Connection to Common Core Standards

CLD students struggling with reading need access to a variety of opportunities that allow them to learn and practice the techniques proficient readers use, enabling them to become more fluent and effective readers. The use of multiple distinct approaches — both group-based and individual — can ensure that struggling readers are better positioned to develop the reading skills they need for academic success throughout their educational careers. It is the responsibility of teachers to ensure that students have access to the right tools and support to help them become motivated, proficient readers. With the approaches discussed in this paper, struggling readers need primarily consistent practice to achieve proficiency and fluency.

The connection between instructional practice and language standards lies in the fact that the Common Core State Standards stipulate what content students are expected to learn at each grade level in order to achieve academic success, whether they are CLD students or native English learners (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010). Aligning reading instruction for CLD learners with these standards ensures that struggling readers are given both the support they need and the opportunity to meet the same rigorous academic expectations as their peers.

References

Alford, J. (2001). Learning language and critical literacy: Adolescent ESL students. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 45(3), 238–242.

Boyd-Batstone, P. (2004). Focused anecdotal records assessment: A tool for standards-based authentic assessment. The Reading Teacher, 58(3), 230–239.

Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research and practice. Teachers College Press.

National Center for Education Statistics. (2011). English language learners in public schools. Institute of Education Sciences. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_047.asp

National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers. (2010). Common Core State Standards for English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. Authors.