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Differentiating Literacy Instruction for Culturally, Linguistically and Ability Diverse Students
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     Need to Know
  --Principles
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Principles of Effective Literacy Instruction
for Diverse Students

Effective literacy instruction for culturally, linguistically and ability diverse students includes:

• Early Intervention
• Collaborative School Climate
• Challenging Curriculum
• Developmentally Appropriate Instruction
• School - Family - Community Collaboration
• Ongoing professional development
• Appropriate assessment

Early Intervention

Reading failure and associated academic problems can be prevented through early intervention. Educators need not wait until a child has failed to use appropriate interventions. Alba Ortiz, a researcher who has worked extensively in the field of bilingual special education, recommends two key principles for preventing school failure:

• creating a school climate conducive to academic success for all students; and
• involving all of the school's educational personnel in the implementation of a challenging curriculum that is appropriate for diverse students.
  

Collaborative School Climate

• Schools that are effective in meeting the needs of diverse learners typically encourage collaboration among administrators, ESL/bilingual teachers, general education teachers and special education teachers. The educators work together as a team to share knowledge and information about effective teaching strategies, understand the issues related to first and second language acquisition and how these relate to literacy development, actively involve families and the community in the school, and work to challenge their students through the integration of basic skills with higher order skills.

Challenging Curriculum

Effective schools for diverse learners provide an academically challenging curriculum that builds on basic skill development to advance students toward development of:

• comprehension of literature and grade-level academic text written in English
• problem-solving, analytical and critical reasoning skills, and
• enriched writing experiences.
  

A challenging curriculum is aligned to state and district standards as well as to standards for English language development such as the ESL standards.

Developmentally Appropriate Instruction· Follow a clear sequence based on grade level standards.

• Even if the teacher does not speak the child's language, she or he may encourage students to use their knowledge of both languages to deepen understanding.
• Students may not always be aware that many of the skills and concepts they apply to reading in their native language may be transferable to English reading. Ask students how they apply what they know in their native language about concepts of print, phonological awareness, and reading comprehension, and model strategies for applying these to English text (Rueda & Earnest, 2001).
• Build on children's knowledge to develop literacy by asking them to compare and contrast their languages.
• Provide ample opportunities for hands-on learning. Start by modeling an activity such as making a clay pot, and provide a running commentary so that students can hear and apply language in context.
• Structure opportunities for students to work in small, cooperative groupings where they may feel more willing to take risks with their new language.
• Support children to expand reading strategies from single words to larger units as they move through the grades.
• Support understanding through the use of scaffolding. Effective methods to enhance understanding include use of simplified declarative sentences, frequent repetition, ample visual aids and gestures, and ongoing monitoring to check for comprehension. When teaching subject matter, start with simplified language until it is clear that children understand, then build to more complex instructional language (Rueda & Earnest, 2001).
• For upper level elementary students, literature-based reading instruction in English has been found to be effective.
• Use examples from grade-level textbooks and authentic literature for more challenging reading. Provide students with strategies for identifying and comprehending meaning and have them work together in cooperative groups to apply these strategies.

  
  Early Literacy

  • Reading instruction for native English speakers typically begins with consonant sounds before introducing vowel sounds. For children who speak other languages, try introducing vowels before consonants (Ramírez, 2000).
  • Further reading instruction for these students would then rely predominantly on syllables rather than single phonemes, as taught, for example, in Spanish-speaking countries.

   

  Meaning-Based Reading Instruction

  • Literacy instruction should not be restricted to language arts or ESL classes. One of the best ways to teach literacy is through the content areas. Mathematics, science and history, for example, provide many opportunities for teachers to build students' literacy skills in meaningful contexts.
  • It is important to provide text that is both comprehensible and challenging - that is, at a level of difficulty that students have enough English to understand (comprehensible input), while stimulating them to move beyond their current level.
  • Provide children with readings on familiar topics that are relevant to their experience and that they can connect to prior knowledge.
  • Reading materials should be culturally meaningful and should help children connect home and school experiences.

  
  Vocabulary Development

  • Provide enriched vocabulary instruction for at least two years.
  • Select a small number of new vocabulary words for students to work with each week.
  • Select challenging academic words that students can analyze by examining context and making inferences in relation to story characters or events
  • Encourage students to find similarities and differences between English words and similar words in their primary language and to explore subtle differences in meaning between the two words.
    

School - Family - Community Collaboration

• Rich interactions with caregivers are important from early infancy, and throughout childhood.
• Families should be encouraged to provide children with ample opportunities to listen to language and to be exposed to print.
• Encourage family members to interact with their children in their strongest language - switching to English when it is not well-developed will restrict linguistic input and may have serious long-term consequences for children's cognitive and linguistic development.

On-going professional development

• Effective schools provide ongoing professional development for their educational personnel regarding issues of cultural and linguistic diversity, bilingual special education, and first and second language development.
• Opportunities to learn about these issues begin with pre-service teachers and continue throughout their careers as teachers.
  

Appropriate assessment

• Use of standardized assessments normed on English-speaking children may not adequately represent what English language learners know and can do. This is because any English-language assessment is as much a test of language as it is of the content it was intended to measure.
• Assessment should be on-going and should rely on multiple sources, including alternative assessment, accommodations, and authentic tasks.
  

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