Out of Her Mind -- Musings on Education and Life

A Teacher's Reflection:  How My Post Masters Classes in Reading Informed My Practice ELL students clap for a fellow classmate after a presentation My Classroom (in 2009)            The teaching context is high school English language arts (ELA) and English language learners (ELLs).   My students are in grades 9-12.   I teach in a large, diverse school of approximately 2300 students located in Burke County.   I typically have between five to fourteen students in any given ELL class and between twenty to thirty-two students in an ELA class.   This past year, I taught an ELL course for novices just starting to acquire conversational English.   I also taught a reading class aimed at providing students with strategies to survive in their content courses like world history and biology.   I taught a communication skills course that focused on all the domains of language usage:   reading, writing, listening, and...

My high interest low vocabulary book, Cars! made at Tar Heel Reader High Interest, Low Vocabulary Books for Older Struggling Readers When young children are learning to read they do so using books that are at their instructional level--books they can read independently with little help from others.  These books are designed to capture the readers' interest and they are written using appropriate vocabulary. What happens, however, if you don't learn to read as quickly as those around you? You could find yourself a high school student (or beyond) struggling with basic reading.  If so, you will quickly realize that the books at your instructional reading level could very well be too childish for you.  What is the solution?  High interest, low vocabulary books or books designed to keep an older person's interest while still being written at a level that makes word identification easier and making meaning more accessible.   Where can these high in...