Research Article #1

Linguistically Diverse Parents and Early Childhood Educators

This week, I read the article, “What linguistically diverse parents know and how it can help early childhood Educators: A case study of a dual language preschool community” by Sara Michael-Luna.  This article focuses on bilingual and multicultural students. Furthermore, assessment and parental contribution is discussed as a way to help propel these students while learning different languages.

Our country has many students that fall into this category and multilingual students are on the rise in the United States. Because of this, it is imperative that we follow suit and learn how to provide lessons and assessments that will help all of our students communicate in a global way.

Parental contribution of multilingual children is heavily needed as we transition into this new area of diversity. For instance, parents have questions about how their children are progressing in the classroom. Parents often believe that their child could be left behind in their studies because they are bilingual. However, this is not the case. For example, some multilingual students will turn in their work written in a combination of the languages they currently speak. It has been assumed that the child is not in fact completing the assignment “correctly”.  Instead, we should assess that the child understands the assignment in different languages and can produce a response to demonstrate that fact. This may not always be the case. However, as teachers, we should ensure our parents that their students have a great platform for learning no matter how many languages they may speak. Thus, we will do what we can to help each child learn how to complete his or her schoolwork successfully without abandoning any of his or her known languages.

On the other hand, if parents are concerned with their child’s progress, we can ask them to give us an idea of how the child’s language is developing at home. Not only can this knowledge provide insight for future lessons in the classroom, it can give the child a since of safety and community while learning in both aspects of their life.

Although, we are aware that our multilingual population is growing, all assessments and teaching tools have not yet blended these aspects to lessons. In fact, it is now that we should focus on discovering more beneficial ways to assess multilingual children.

What linguistically diverse parents know and how it can help early childhood Educators: A case study of a dual language preschool community
Sara Michael-Luna
Early Childhood Education Journal, 3 March 2013

Resource:

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Prosody Awareness

 This week, the podcast “The Importance of and support of Intonation During Silent Reading” with Dr. Jennifer Gross, discussed how prosody combine with silent reading help children's fluency between the ages 5 and 8.  Prosody is described as a rhythm or a melody when speaking. As we communicate verbally, students encounter prosody in everyday, regular speech. However they may night realize this concept. Children are also exposed to melody in speech when they read silently and while being exposed to other media. Two of the most common areas for children are within relationships and classrooms. Everyday, children speak to family members, friends and other community members using different tones for each relationship. Teachers also change tone and prosody throughout the day. For instance, teachers may change their toe when disciplining a child, versus rewarding the child.  In print, children can see changes in tone and prosody with repeating words, words that use all capital letters. Children are exposed to prosody every day however, we want to emphasize how to teach it in the reading curriculum.

Prosody is a concept, which bilingual, multicultural, or nonnative speakers can relate. For example, Brazilian Portuguese phrase such as: “Tudo bem.”  and “Tudo bem?” are written the same. However, It is all in the intonation that determines whether it's a question or a statement. The former translates to: “Everything is good.” and the latter translate to “Is everything good?” or “How are things?”

For children, storytelling goes along way with prosody.  For example, in the film, "A Little Princess", the children listening to the story are falling asleep until a young girl named Sarah begins reading the book with prosody. At that moment, the children became much more interested in paying attention. Interest will encourage young readers to read as well as make meaning and learn fluency while reading. In this case, the children would be interested in this application because they might want to tell the story to someone else.

This can be a universal strategy that can help children across cultures and ages. It bridges interests, fluency and meaning making. As Dr. Gross suggested, reading is unnatural according to science and takes instruction. Therefore, these aids are important for us to model to children in a way that will help them get excited about reading. Another interesting take from the podcast is that we can take prosody practice a step further by exposing babies to read alouds before birth. If babies are learning prosody in the womb, we can use this opportunity as a tool to help set children up for instruction once they reach school age.

It Takes a Village

This week’s podcast titled, Teaching Language Arts in a High Stakes Era with Dr. Caitlin Dooley, explored the influence of standardized tests since the implementation of No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. The act changed testing by putting more pressure on students and teachers to perform well on tests at any cost. For instance, these tests are now used to make decisions that impact teachers, students, and communities as a whole. Teachers are at risk for losing their jobs, students are at risk for being held back in school, and parents are at risk for losing great teachers that can truly help their children. Since standardized tests are the only measure used to assess student’s academic skills, it is no wonder that classrooms are becoming less about learning and more about the pressure to compete with other students, teachers, schools, and countries.

            Teachers that have a passion for teaching are quitting because they simply cannot teach in ways that truly help children succeed. For instance, many teachers feel as though this assessment is not working and yet does not support student achievement. Along with complying with districts, students have no time or breathing room to help students whom are less fortunate than others. Students that live in communities that do not have very much funding or academic support rely on teachers to help them make meaning of their studies. If teachers are not allowed to do this, those children can become…left behind.

              This issue is an ongoing fight. Teachers should continue to find ways to help students in spite of the politics. This can be difficult and will take hard work, however it is important that teachers try to help students in a holistic way, not just toward getting a great test score. Parents are also a key role in helping students and teachers. Parents can rally with teachers by making connections with policy makers, assisting children at home and keeping open communication with teachers. It really does take a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to teach a child. 

Open Communication

After reading Chapter 11: Sharing Information With Families of Catching Readers Before They Fall, I realized how important it was to bridge the teacher-parent gap. It is not enough to have parent teacher conferences to assess the student’s progress. We must work together in other aspects as well. For instance, chapter 11 raises many questions that parents have about our curriculum and teaching process.  Parents want to help their student as much as we do and there are concerns that go beyond a conference. In order to help the parents, we need to make sure that we can explain our instructional strategies and know how to ask the parents for help when the student is at home.

Parents will not always understand our view on instruction. The questions brought up in Chapter 11 demonstrate that clearly. We may have ideas that work in the classroom, but parents need to understand in more depth why we choose the strategies and techniques that we currently use. That said, it is important to be explicit about what these terms “mean” for our classroom. For instance, one of the parents asks, “What is a strategy?” Too often, we assume that parents understand our lingo. After doing what we can to explain to parents our process, we need to let them know how they can help at home.

A part of assessment is to understand the student’s abilities at the time before instruction. We can go from there to set up a plan for their growth and assessment. Also, parents are rightfully concerned about standardized tests as is demonstrated in Chapter 11. It is understandable that parents want to make sure our individual strategies will actually help their student pass tests. As teachers we should take the time to help parents understand why we chose our strategies and show measurable results on how it works for tests and growth. For instance, in the blog with Dr. P. David Pearson, he says that it is good for parents to ask questions to the schools because it keeps schools accountable. Although it will take extra time to speak with parents, we should embrace communication because it ultimately helps our children succeed. Having an ongoing discourse with the parents will also show them that we care about their child as an individual as well as a child who is an integral part of the class.

Parents are as important as teachers when helping children learn. In fact, bridging teachers and parents will help the student reach more heights. Open communication can help both sides learn what is needed to help the student at home, in the classroom, and in the world.