Dr. Maryann Hasso- maryann_hasso@hotmail.com

[Instructional Tools for Cultural Proficiency in the Classroom] [Improving reading engagement and equity in the classroom to meet the needs of underserved students]

WHY??? [To implement use of specific instructional tools for school

administrators to assess student progress in meeting the needs of

underserved students, and to effectively describe, respond to, and

plan for change to better meet their needs within a culturally

proficient classroom]

About Cultural Proficiency

Given how foundational culturally responsive pedagogy is to academic achievement in nearly every content area, it is critical that school administrators support teachers in developing culturally responsive and proficient pedagogical skills as efficiently, effectively, and equitable as possible.

Classroom Strategies New Principals Can Provide Teachers To Support Culturally Proficient Literacy Within the Classroom: Reading lesson engagement:

Vocabulary and reading acquisition could involve the use of imagery, games, drama, humor, and mystery to engage students. Here are some ways to do that:

● Drawing

● Coloring pages and picture books help students visualize the words that they are being taught, which helps with comprehension. While older students may not be interested in coloring or reading storybooks, they too benefit from visual stimulation. That’s why writing words out or creating flashcards helps in memorization of vocabulary words.

● Brainstorming

●

● Vocabulary builds upon itself, and association with words that are already familiar to students is one of

the most effective means of teaching students unfamiliar words. Teachers who help students

associate new words with words they already know well will help students with long-term retention.

● Act it Out

●

Younger children, especially, respond to games, but older kids don’t generally mind a little injection of fun into their school days either. Teachers can make vocabulary words more fun to learn by turning the process into a game, like charades, or jeopardy.

● Students can take turns acting out one of the vocabulary words, while the other students guess the word. In order for charades with vocabulary words to work, students need some basis in the vocabulary, so teachers should schedule the game of charades a few days after students first get their vocabulary words. Teachers may want to release the word list on Monday, for instance, and make Friday game day.

● Write a Story

● ● A larger vocabulary enhances students’ writing and

reading abilities, so what better way for students to retain words than to use them in stories? Teachers can assign stories on an individual basis, or make it a class project.

● By having students incorporate all their vocabulary words correctly into the text, students get the opportunity to learn proper spelling and definitions, and also how to use the words in context

Active learning instruction:

The active learning instructional model is designed to engage student critical thinking: with partners in a group, to express ideas in reading and writing, and explore personal attitudes.

Language Instruction:

When a student receives adequate individual attention to their personal language needs, they tend to do better.

Instructional time for choosing literature:

Inappropriate choices due to lack of time to choose books for student reading, by the teacher, can place the reading material beyond the student’s ability to comprehend. By giving all learners time to choose literature they would be engaged and interested in will benefit them.

Teacher Professional Development:

Attending conferences and seminars to stay abreast of the different strategies to promote an equitable classroom will be important

Cultural Pedagogy:

Cultural integration through various cultural popular literatures such as magazines is important. Establishing a comfortable connection between instructor and students is essential. Working with individual learning and cultural styles surfaced as a way to connect with different students. Cultural ties could help connect teacher and students as teachers strive to learn more about their students’ culture and students strive to learn more about English and creating an equitable place to learn. (Novels such as Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston are just a few. Making personal and cultural connections with literature supports ELLs and students of various cultural backgrounds.

Reading and Writing Pedagogy: Students will engage in genuinely meaningful tasks. Thus, student engagement is the first objective of instruction. Incorporating games, support from teachers, help in reading difficult words, encouragement to read outside of classes, grouping of

students, and making connections to students’ cultures can support and create a more equitable classroom.

Utilizing as Many Resources as Possible:

Conferencing with demonstrations, videos, guest lecturers, and think-aloud guides, build and expand on student background knowledge to increase comprehension

Online Videos Another visual way to promote cultural pedagogy is teach vocabulary through videos that showcase the words used in lesson. Videos created for people learning English as a second language are also ideal for teaching younger students words with which they have had little or no exposure. YouTube Teachers’ Language Arts section is a good place to look for video content that is safe for classroom viewing.

Think-alouds

With this strategy, teachers verbalize aloud while reading a selection orally. Their verbalizations

include describing things they're doing as they read to monitor their comprehension. The purpose of the think-aloud strategy is to model for students how skilled readers construct meaning from a text.

Watch think-alouds in action

More comprehension strategies:

● Listen-Read-Discuss (LRD) ● Think-Pair-Share ● Visual Imagery

Why use think-alouds? ● It helps students learn to monitor their thinking as

they read and improves their comprehension. ● It teaches students to re-read a sentence, read

ahead to clarify, and/or look for context clues to make sense of what they read.

● It slows down the reading process and allows students to monitor their understanding of a text.

● Example of my own classroom.

How to use think-alouds 1. Begin by modeling this strategy. Model your

thinking as you read. Do this at points in the text that may be confusing for students (new vocabulary, unusual sentence construction).

2. Introduce the assigned text and discuss the purpose of the Think-Aloud strategy. Develop the set of questions to support thinking aloud (see examples below).

○ What do I know about this topic? ○ What do I think I will learn about this topic?

○ Do I understand what I just read? ○ Do I have a clear picture in my head about

this information? ○ What more can I do to understand this? ○ What were the most important points in

this reading? ○ What new information did I learn?

○ How does it fit in with what I already know? 3. Give students opportunities to practice the

technique, and offer structured feedback to students.

4. Read the selected passage aloud as the students read the same text silently. At certain points stop and " think="" aloud"="" the="" answers="" to="" some="" of="" preselected="" questions.

5. Demonstrate how good readers monitor their understanding by rereading a sentence, reading ahead to clarify, and/or looking for context clues. Students then learn to offer answers to the questions as the teacher leads the think-aloud.

Download blank template

● Template (42K PDF)*

Differentiated instruction

for Second Language Learners, students of varying reading skill, and younger learners

● Have students do think-alouds in large or small groups; teacher and other students monitor and help.

● Ask students to do think-alouds individually, and then compare with others. Students can write their own commentary.

● Complete, or have students complete, think-alouds orally, in writing, on an overhead, with Post-it notes, or in a journal.

Sample Prompts for a Think Aloud Sample Prompts that relate to Book Selection ● The title/author/picture of this book,

article, etc. makes me think it’s about _______________________. • The photographs help me because I think this book might be about __________________. • The comments on the inside/outside of this book help me in deciding if I want

to read this book because ____________. • This book, article, passage, etc. makes me think about another book, article, passage I read that was about ____________. I think I will like it because _________________. I don’t think I will like it because.

Sample Prompts that relate to Personal Purposes for Reading ● Oh, yeah, I read this author’s last

book, I’ll bet this is good/not good because __________________. • I’ll read this book because I want to learn more about _____________. • Reading this may help me find out _____________. • Reading this may help me to understand ____________. • I want something (funny, scary, true) to read and just taking a picture walk with this book tells me I might be interested in this book because _______________.

Sample Prompts that relate to Making Predictions ● I’m guessing that ________ will

happen next. I will read on to see if my prediction was correct. • I wonder if _______________. • I imagine the author believes that ___________________.

● After reading this passage, page, paragraph, etc. I think the character will _____________________. • I’ll bet that ______________ is going to happen next. I will use my cues to infer what will happen next.

Sample Prompts that help us Connect to Text in a personal way ● This is like _______________. • That

reminds me of ______________. • This could help me with ____________. • This is helping me think about/or make plans for _________________. • I can relate to this character because ________________. • This made me think of ________________.

Sample Prompts that help us Monitor Comprehension • This is not making sense because ______________________. • This is not what I expected because ____________________. • This connects (ordoesn’t connect) to what I already know, have read or have experienced because ___________________. Sample Prompts that relate to Visualization ● I imagine _____________. • I see

_________________. • I have a picture of _______________. • In my mind’s eye I can see ________________. • When I close my eyes I envision or see

_______________. • This picture makes me see ____________. • This photograph helps me see ____________.

Sample Prompts that relate to Fix-Up Strategies that repair comprehension ● Maybe I’d better reread to find out

________________. • Since I don’t understand this word, I could use one of my fix-up strategies like ____________ and try to figure it out. • What I thought this was about no longer makes sense because _______________. I will reread to see if I missed something important. • Maybe I need to consider _______________. • I think I will read on to see if I can figure out _______________. • This really isn’t making any sense to me. I think I will try to chunk some of the big ideas that are confusing me like ___________. • I’m wondering if my partner is having difficulty with ______________, I think I will think aloud with him/her and see if we are thinking the same thing. • I just thought of _______________, maybe that will help me. • So far, I’ve learned that _________________. I will use what I already know about this to figure out _________.

Culturally Responsive Instruction: Building on the ethnic foundation of all learners through various types of ethnic literature. For example, providing students with chicano, Asian, African-American, European literature is a way of supporting student’s ethnic backgrounds. Other ways include, Some of the characteristics of culturally responsive teaching are:

1. Positive perspectives on parents and families- Communicating with parents

2. Communication of high expectations-High academic expectations

3. Learning within the context of culture 4. Student-centered instruction 5. Culturally mediated instruction 6. Reshaping the curriculum 7. Teacher as facilitator

● Building parent involvement:

● One strategy would be a teacher reaching one ELL

parent every week to talk about his or her child, or to educate the parent about a school occasion. Regardless of what language the teacher or students’ parents use, parental backing is a major key to scholastic achievement.

● Increasing Writing Opportunities:

● One exercise is to require students to participate in

a week-by-week written work plan that concentrates on adding to a certain expertise. Example: Students can write about what they enjoy doing most as a way of engaging them with

[The various cultural pedagogical strategies that were explored regarding instructional support strategies will help school principals support teachers overcome those student barriers in creating a classroom that is culturally

equitable. These strategies will benefit principals and teachers in enhancing their teaching models to focus on

their culturally diverse student body and refine instructional strategies to create a more equitable

classroom.]

Get started right away:

It’s easy to begin implementing these

strategies…

• Take Risks!