Hope Winburn

October 27, 2015

EDUC 6400
Materials Analysis 1
1. a.) Looking at the Unit Overview and Day 1 lesson plans, which of the models is the
basis for this instructional plan? Name the model.
The materials used for this lesson most closely represent a Rumelhart model of
literacy development.
2. a.) What cue systems/knowledge sources are targeted for explicit instruction or
teacher demonstration in the Journeys program? Cite examples from the Journeys
materials to support your points.
The very first task the students encounter is a teacher read aloud of My Colors,
My World. This is an engaging text for young readers, with a focus on content and ideas
rather than decodability. While students work with a decodable reader later in the lesson,
they do not start with it. Students first experience with text in this lesson and unit is one
centered on interest and comprehension. Before beginning to read, the teacher will Lead
children to use the title and the illustrations on the cover, title page, and pp. 2-3 to predict
what the book is about. Accept all reasonable suggestions (xxiv). Based on students
prior knowledge about colors and the illustrations they see, students are asked to make
reasonable hypotheses about the content of the text. Students are using context from
semantic and lexical knowledge sources to influence comprehension. Unlike in an Adams
model, students are not solely focusing on decoding words through the orthographic and
phonological processors. Instead, lower and upper levels of knowledge sources (lexical
and semantic) are working simultaneously to create meaning.
The beginning activity (warm up with wordplay) for lesson 1 asks students to
hypothesize a word to fill in the blank at the end of a sentence. The two sentences have
parallel syntactic structure, so students can activate the syntactic and semantic knowledge
sources to hypothesize what word to use. Students might also be able to determine that
they need to come up with a noun because there is already a subject and verb in each
sentence. During this activity students are also asked to identify the capital letter that
begins each sentence (T12). Students have to use their letter knowledge to first identify
the capital letter and then use their phonological knowledge source to produce the
corresponding sound that letter makes.
For both the daily phonemic awareness and the daily high-frequency word tasks,
if students mispronounce a word then they are asked to break the word into sounds or to
spell it, thus activating the lexical and letter knowledge sources. Students start with
phonemic awareness in order to determine meaning. During the teachers read aloud of
The Lion and the Mouse the teacher emphasizes reading words correctly and models
how to self correct. The purpose of the read aloud is twofold: model fluency and
encourage strong listening comprehension (T14-T15). During the read aloud students

have to use their phonological word representations as well as their word meaning cueing
systems.
When working with the decodable reader (Dan and Nan), the teacher asks
students to connect sounds to spelling. Students get to review trickier words before being
asked to write the words that the teacher reads. Students are also asked to predict what is
going to happen in the story and to correct their decoding errors. The teacher keeps track
of the errors, which means that she can do a miscue analysis in order to find patterns
where students cueing systems are not being activated yet.
Finally, with the text What is a Pal? students work together on words to know by
using context cards. The vocabulary word is highlighted in the sentence, allowing
students to use the context of the sentence to determine the word meaning, activating
lexical, syntactic, and semantic knowledge sources. Once students identify the word then
they are asked to use it in a new sentence in order to show if they can apply the word
meaning in a new context, showing the strength of their semantic knowledge source.
While reading this text students also have to identify the main idea and supporting details
in order to help them better understand the meaning of the text. The teacher does a close
reading of the text to help students find the main idea and supporting details. Students can
develop comprehension through guided questioning, summarizing (target strategy), and
using vocabulary in context (T24). Students can use context clues and hints from the
teacher to activate their semantic knowledge source and in turn make hypothesizes about
the meaning of the text.
b.) What cue systems/knowledge sources get the most instructional emphasis when you
look at the Journeys Day 1 lesson as a whole? How does this instruction emphasis reflect
the identified model of reading?
This lesson is mainly focused on the letter and lexical knowledge sources. Out of
the seven goals for the lesson (vocabulary and oral language, phonemic awareness,
phonics and fluency, words to know, text-based comprehension, grammar and writing,
and spelling) five goals are focused on phonological awareness at the letter and lexical
levels. While students do end the lesson with comprehension questions focusing on
summarization and main idea, they first have to identify and pronounce key words in this
task. Besides the introduction of the Big Book (My Colors, My World) all of the activities
leading up to comprehension and writing are focused on lower level knowledge sources.
However, these lower level knowledge sources are supported by the syntactic and
semantic knowledge sources. Rumelhart argues, The perceptions of letters often depend
on the surrounding letters and supports this with Hueys study in which he found more
letters can be apprehended per unit time when a word is presented than when a string of
unrelated letters is presented (Rumelhart, 1154-1155). In the lesson, the teacher always
starts with words then has students break them down into letters and corresponding
sounds. Students are more successful at identifying letters when they are presented in
words rather than separated.

Rumelhart also states, Our perception of words depends on the syntactic

environment in which we encounter the words (Rumelhart, 1157). To support this
statement, Rumelhart cites a study done by Miller and Isard (1963) who found that
many more words could be reported when the sentences were syntactically normal
which is another case of a higher level of processing determining the perceptibility of
units at a lower level (Rumelhart, 1158). The decodable reader in particular (Dan and
Nan) provides students with predictable sentence structures that they can use to
hypothesize the meaning of unrecognized words. What is a Pal? also uses common
sentence structures which will help students construct meaning from the text.
Ironically, the lesson seems to attempt to emulate a bottom-up model of literacy
by starting with letter and word knowledge and culminating in comprehension, but the
structure of the activities themselves suggests that students will have to use their different
levels of knowledge sources simultaneously and in different orders. Rumelhart explains,
hypotheses can be generated at any level, the system makes the best guesses and
checks out their implications, and if these guesses are wrong, it will take a bit longer,
but the system will eventually find some hypotheses at some level that it can accept
(Rumelhart, 1165-1166). During the daily phonemic awareness activity students can
either identify the word first and then pronounce the sound of the first letter in that word,
or start with pronouncing the letters and then identify the word. Depending on the
student, a different knowledge source (letter or lexical in this case) will be activated to
determine meaning.
Furthermore, during the teachers Read Aloud of The Lion and the Mouse the
teacher does not ask students to identify key vocabulary words until after she has read the
sentence where the word is found. Students can use the syntactic and semantic context
from the sentence to construct the meaning of the vocabulary word. Even when working
with the decodable reader, the teacher first asks students to preview pages 3-5 and
predict what the story is about. Ask volunteers to share what they know about cats
(T19). Only after activating prior knowledge and making predictions do students focus on
fluency and lexical knowledge. For the anchor text (What is a Pal?) students first review
words to know and have to ask themselves How do I use it? (T20). Once students have
activated their lexical knowledge they are able to focus on comprehending the text. For
this activity, lower knowledge sources comes first, and then semantic knowledge.
However, throughout the lesson as a whole, some activities start with higher level
knowledge sources and others start with lower levels, but all knowledge sources act
simultaneously to help students create hypothesis about words as well as general text
meaning.
3.a.) Analyze the characteristics of the two texts read aloud by teachers.
The first text read aloud by the teacher is My Colors, My World. This text has
English on one side and a Spanish translation on the corresponding page. Illustrations are
always important as a support for comprehension, but this is especially true for this book
because its focus is on the colors of the narrators world. The first page of the story
provides a setting for students so if they are familiar with the desert they can activate

their prior knowledge in terms of what a desert looks like. Each page never has more than
three lines of text, so students are not overwhelmed by solely giving their attention to
word recognition. On page 6 the word colors is in a bigger font, bolded, and the letters
are in different colors. Students will know that this is an important word that they need to
remember. This emphasis will help them connect the word to the main idea.
Then on page 8, the word pink is written in the color pink as well. Students see a
picture of a sunset, which is hopefully a concept that they are familiar with. On page 10
the reader gets further proof that pink is her favorite color. This page has three sentences
with parallel syntactic structure, which should help students decode and comprehend
them. Page 12 connects the color brown to mud pies and the color orange to marigold
flowers. Students will have background knowledge on mud and flowers and be able to
use this to comprehend this page. While page 14 employs this same technique, students
are less likely to be familiar with irises and pollen. The illustration can help students
figure out that irises are flowers but the teacher might have to explain what pollen is.
Page 16 changes the syntactic structure from color (adjective) plus noun to color
as direct object. Instead of saying the green cactus, the author writes, the cactus grows
green. Students might have to rely more heavily on lexical knowledge than syntactic
knowledge here if this sentence structure is unfamiliar to them. Pages 18 and 20 connect
colors to the narrators father, something students can definitely connect to. Overall the
content of the book seems accessible, but differing sentence structures and unfamiliar
words might make this text more challenging. The detailed illustrations are a major
support for comprehension and the layout with dual languages will make this text
relatable for students who speak Spanish. The best characteristics of this book are the
content, theme, illustrations, and layout, while the characteristics that make this book
more challenging are its structure, language/vocabulary, and length.
The next text read aloud by the teacher is The Lion and the Mouse. This text
has no illustrations for students to use to help their comprehension. However, students
will be familiar with the language, content, and themes in this text. Students can activate
their prior knowledge on lions, mice, and friendship. The text has varied sentence
structure, but clear organizational structure as a whole. The text is rather long and the
font is small which could be intimidating to students. There are some tricky vocabulary
words that are not highlighted such as favor, spare, captured, scampered, tangled,
gnawed, weaken, and wiggle (T14-T15). The language is advanced in this text selection.
It would definitely not be appropriate for students to read independently. Students can
focus on listening to the content as well as relating to the themes.
b.) What parts of the reading process are developed through teacher read alouds?
In My Colors, My World students are focused on the lexical, syntactic, and
semantic aspects of Rumelharts model of the reading process. The word colors as well
as all the individual colors are bolded, in a larger font, and are in color. Students will pay
attention to these words and connect their lexical knowledge to their semantic knowledge
by determining the significance of these words. Students will be introduced to a variety

of sentence structures. Some will be more familiar than others, which will support
comprehension. Overall, semantic knowledge and comprehension are the most
emphasized parts of the reading process for this text. The same goes for The Lion and
the Mouse. Students might not be as familiar with the language or structure, but they
will be familiar with the content and themes and can therefore draw meaning from these
text characteristics.
c.) Describe the characteristics of the materials to be read by students.
Dan and Nan, a decodable reader, is the first text that students experience on their
own. Unlike the two texts read by the teacher, Dan and Nan has much simpler language
and structure. The illustrations are not as specific or informative and the story does not
have a major take-away theme. While the content is not as strong, there should not be any
unfamiliar words or syntax. Furthermore, the sentence length is shorter and the layout is
consistent across each page (picture on top with one line of text beneath). What is a Pal?
is similar to the Dan and Nan in its accessible language and consist, alternating sentence
structures. First the text reads, A pal can help you, then, Sam and Nat can help Dan.
The next page follows this pattern, reading, A pal can play with you. Tad, Cam and Nan
can play (T26-T27). There are no words with more than four letters and the same verb
(can) is used through the first three and a half pages. One difference between these two
texts is the illustrations. What is a Pal? has stronger illustrations that can contribute more
to students reading comprehension. There is also a stronger theme (friendship) that
students can relate to.
d.) How does the design of these student texts reflect the underlying model of reading?
While reading Dan and Nan, students are mostly focused on letter and lexical
knowledge sources. However, the consistency of the sentence structures allows students
to use their syntactic knowledge source to inform their letter and lexical hypotheses. Dan
and Nan is more of a bottom-up approach because students are more focused on
phonological awareness and word recognition. They have to have these two aspects of the
reading process down before they can create meaning from the text. However, What is a
Pal? gives students more context from illustrations, content, and syntax, which allows
students to access higher level knowledge sources to determine letters and words (more
top-down). Just as Rumelhart believes in a highly interactive parallel processing
system, these two texts allow students to approach them using different, interacting
knowledge sources (Rumelhart, 1174).
4.a.) In what way(s) is text complexity incorporated in the Day 1 lesson we are
analyzing? What is your evaluation of text complexity in these lessons?
The two texts read aloud by the teacher are highly complex, particularly The
Lion and the Mouse. Quantitatively, The Lion and the Mouse has longer words, words
that are only mentioned once, and longer sentences. Qualitatively, there are multiple
levels of meaning, a variety of sentence structures, and potentially unfamiliar language,
which increases knowledge demands. There is also no support from illustrations. Most

significantly, this text should be considered highly complex based on the task students are
asked to do. Wixon and Valencia explain, It becomes clear that complexity is not an
inherent property of the text. Rather it is a function of the interaction among reader, text,
and task factors within a particular situation (Wixon, 431). Students are asked to focus
on listening comprehension, the teachers fluency, oral vocabulary, and then they must
answer questions about character traits, comparisons and contrasts, and theme. For
example, the teacher asks, What do you think the lion learned from the mouse? There
is not an explicit answer in the text so students will have to make an inference, which
requires more critical thinking. All three measures (quantitative, qualitative, and task)
combine to make this the most complex text of the four used in this lesson.
My Colors, My World is the next most complex text. Again, there are longer
words, words that are only used once, a variety of sentence structures, unfamiliar
language, and multiple levels of meaning. Fisher and Frey describe levels of meaning as
The number of ideas presented, how quickly they are introduced, and the layers of
meaning from literal to subversive can be evaluated to determine how friendly a text will
be for a given reader and if it will challenge the reader appropriately (Fisher & Frey,
239). One level of meaning is that the narrator has a lot of favorite colors. Another is that
the colors describe her house and settings. But a more complex reading is that colors are
linked to memories of family and important relationships. Furthermore, the task that
accompanies this text asks comprehension questions with explicit answers. There is also
a question that is not text-based, (What color do you like best?) which decreases
complexity, but increases reader relatability. My Colors, My World has both friendly and
challenging aspects. The illustrations and familiar content make it more accessible to
students, while the vocabulary, sentence structures, and big ideas might be more
challenging for students.
What is a Pal? comes next. Word length and sentence length are both shorter,
words are repeated frequently (pal, can, with, you), and there is less variety in sentence
structure. The content and theme of friendship will be familiar to students, and the
detailed illustrations should help comprehension. In terms of quantitative and qualitative
factors, this is not a very complex text, but the multiple tasks associated with this text
make it more complex than Dan and Nan. Students have to complete a close reading of
the text to look for main idea and supporting details. They are focused on comprehension
and summarization. Students have to answer inference questions and defend or explain
their answers, making this text appropriately challenging because of its corresponding
tasks.
Finally, Dan and Nan has the shortest words and sentences, uses the same words
frequently, (nine different words used out of 23 total words), and has parallel sentence
structure throughout the text. However, the illustrations are not very detailed so they are
less helpful for comprehension. Hiebert also reminds us, According to research, shorter
sentences do not always make text easier. Short sentences tend to have fewer context
clues and fewer links between ideas, requiring the reader to make more inferences
(Hiebert, 5). The content of this text does not allow for a main idea or theme for students
to grasp. The lack of context clues from illustrations and no connecting ideas can actually

make this text a little more difficult. However, the task that accompanies this text is the
least complex because students are only asked to activate their lower level knowledge
sources. Students have to connect sounds to letters and then they spell words from the
text read aloud by the teacher. This task is solely focused on phonological awareness,
with no attention to comprehension.
b.) In what way(s) is close reading incorporated into the lesson plans for Day 1? What is
your evaluation of close reading activities in these lessons?
Close reading is explicitly used with What is a Pal? During the close reading
tasks, the teacher provides guiding questions for the students, with particular emphasis on
the essential question: What is important about being a friend? (T25). Students
brainstorm what being a pal looks like before they even begin reading. Lapp (2013)
suggests using companion texts to build background knowledge, language, and literacy
skills to accomplish analytic or deep text reading of continually more sophisticated,
topically similar texts (Lapp, 3). Before students read What is a Pal? they read The
Lion and the Mouse as well as Dan and Nan. All three texts focus on friendship so
students have already been exposed to this theme prior to the close reading. Furthermore,
What is a Pal? is read after Dan and Nan, a text that is less sophisticated and complex.
Lapp also suggests, To begin a close reading, students need opportunities to
independently attempt an initial reading of a text passage (Lapp, 3). Students do get to
read this text on their own with scaffolds as they progress through the text.
Fisher and Frey also provide criterion for close reading. They state that during
close reading students should write questions and reactions in the margins, incorporate
evidence from the text into discussions and writing tasks, reread the text, make inferences
while reading, and include post-reading tasks based on text (Fisher and Frey, 16). While
reading, the students are encouraged to ask their own questions about the text and share
their thoughts with their peers. The teachers instructions state, Prompt children to ask
questions about the text every few pages, and have the rest of the group share their
answers to the questions (T25). After reading, the students have to answer questions
and provide evidence from the text to support their responses. The teacher will prompt,
Do you think the children in these pictures are pals? Use ideas from the picture and from
the rest of the selection to help you answer (T30). Students are also asked to reread the
text when the teacher says, Think about the words and look again at the picture. How are
the pals helping each other? (T27). Students participate in smaller discussions when the
teacher has them talk to partners about important information they see in the pictures
and read in the words (T28).
What is a Pal? is an appropriate text selection for a close reading because it is
accessible to students while also complex and worthy of this level of attention due to
density, language conventions and clarity, prior knowledge, and cultural knowledge
(Fisher and Frey, 16). While students have prior and cultural knowledge about friendship,
some of the language and variety in sentence structures will be appropriately challenging
for students. As stated in the previous paragraph, this activity has all the components that
both Lapp and Fisher and Frey define as an effective close reading, including text-based

questions, requiring textual evidence, talking to peers, making inferences, and rereading
the text.
5.a.) If students participated in these Journeys lessons (as written in the teachers guide)
what cultural model of reading would they form? What would they think reading was
like?
First, Gee defines cultural models as everyday theories that tell people what is
typical or normal from the perspective of a particular Discourse (Gee, 36). Earlier in
the reading Gee relates Discourses to identities and states, all that is important is that
people can recognize (consciously or unconsciously) that in word and deed someone is
being a certain kind of person engaged in a certain kind of activity (Gee, 36). Thus,
this lesson asks students to be close readers, decoders, and meaning producers. Based on
this Discourse, students will find it normal to think of reading as both decoding and
comprehending text. The relationship between decoding and comprehending does not
have to be unidirectional. Rather than decoding and phonemic awareness always
proceeding meaning, there are multiple activities (both teacher read alouds and close
reading of the anchor text) that ask students to use the context from syntactic and
semantic knowledge sources in order to decode and recognize words. Ultimately, this is a
cultural model in which children will think that phonemic awareness and comprehension
are equally important in order to read effectively.
b.) What purposes, values, attitudes about reading are part of this cultural model?
The purpose of reading is threefold: decode words, pronounce them, and
understand them. Even during the phonemic awareness activity students work with
partners to build words using letter cards a, c, d, n, s, t, and then use each word in a
sentence. If the teacher wanted to stop at phonemic awareness then students would not
be asked to create their own words using these letters or to then put these words in a
sentence. The ultimate goal is not pronunciation, but understanding the meaning of the
words they are pronouncing. In this cultural model, decoding and phonemic awareness
are valued as tools to improve comprehension. The attitude of the teacher is then that
students need automatic word recognition to comprehend words and that understanding
the meaning of words can improve automatic word recognition. Just at Rumelhart
explains, the knowledge sources can go both ways rather than higher levels or lower
levels working in a static sequence.
c.) What reading roles are first grade students expected to take? What stances or actions
toward text are part of these roles? What reading roles are not yet offered to first grade
readers?
First graders must take on the role of decoders and meaning makers. Students are
also listeners, collaborators, and appliers. They listen to their teacher model fluency,
pronunciation, and how to close read. They also frequently work with partners or in small
groups to practice the skills they are learning and to share their thoughts about the text.
After they learn new sounds, words, and information about the text, they have to apply

their new knowledge by creating original sentences or making inferences about what they
have read and connecting the stories to their own lives. Their stance toward text would
then be that text is meant to be understood and related to. They approach texts with the
intention to decode and comprehend them, and then to make personal connections to
what they have read. Reading roles that they are not yet taken are making connections
between texts or making connections between the text and larger issues in the world.
They are focused on comprehending the meaning of the text and thinking about text in
relation to their lives, but they are not yet seeing the authors purpose or how a text says
something bigger about society. Furthermore, the themes they are working with are
highly familiar to them and thus easy to conceptualize. As they get older they will have to
take on roles in which reading is not only about decoding in order to understand text, but
rather, understanding text leads to understanding motifs throughout literature and the
world.
6.a.) Luke and Freebody propose a Four Resources Model of Reading. Which of the
resources are targeted for instruction in this set of materials? For each resource you
name, give a brief (2-3 sentence) example or explanation that will let me understand how
the Journeys lessons support (or do not support) childrens learning of that resource.
Coding practices and text-meaning practices are targeted for instruction in this set
of materials. The materials fail to include pragmatic and critical practices. Freebody and
Luke explain that coding practices answer the questions, How do I crack this text? How
does it work? What are its patterns and conventions? How do the sounds and the marks
relate, singly and in combination? (Luke and Freebody, 454). In the phonemic
awareness guided practice, students learn that cracking the text means sounding out
letters and blending sounds to create words. For example, when working on the word
Dan the teacher will Display and point to the letter card D and the teacher will say,
Listen: /d/. This is the first sound in the word Dan. Now you say /d/ (T17). The teacher
holds up the a card next, says the sound, models how to blend the two letters, and then
asks students to try. The students follow the same routine for the n. In this activity
students are learning that breaking the code means first identifying individual letter
sounds, then blending them to pronounce and comprehend words.
For text-meaning practices Luke and Freebody suggest focusing on questions
such as, How do the ideas represented in the text string together? What cultural
resources can be brought to bear on the text? What are the cultural meanings and possible
readings that can be constructed from this text? (Luke and Freebody, 454). After reading
What is a Pal? students end the close reading task with a guided summary. Students will
Use the prompts on the Retelling Cards to guide children to identify the main idea about
the topic and retell key details as they summarize the selection (T31). Students have to
identify the main idea in order to determine which cultural meaning is being most
emphasized. In this case, students can see that if they want to be a good pal, they need to
be helpful and fun. Students have to retell the smaller details to come up with this main
idea and see what is most important in the text. In the summarizing rubric, a highly
effective summary occurs when the child restates the main idea; identifies the important
facts or details; retells the order of events by referring to the words and/or illustrations;

requires little or no prompting (T31). Students use these steps to determine a possible
reading of the text and they have to defend their reading of the text with evidence from
words or illustrations, the sequence of events, and identifying the main idea and
important details.
b.) We read about a variety of ways that students can begin to take a critical perspective
as readers. Lewison, Leland, and Harste propose four dimensions of critical literacy.
Briefly describe an extension activity you might add to these lessons to help your
students begin to take a critical perspective. Name the dimension of critical literacy that
you are targeting in the extension lesson.
In order for students to take a critical perspective on this lesson, the teacher could
incorporate a more in-depth discussion after reading My Colors, My World in which
students are asked to think about the implications of including a Spanish translation in
this text. The dimension of critical literacy targeted by this discussion would be
interrogating multiple viewpoints. Lewison explains, In this dimension we engage in a
process of reflecting on multiple and contradictory perspectives as well as using
multiple voices to interrogate texts by asking questions such as Whose voices are heard
and whose are missing? (Lewison, 383). Students can reflect on the fact that multiple
voices are represented in this book, but there are still other languages and cultures that are
missing. Boys might have a harder time relating to this book as well as children whose
native language is neither English nor Spanish. Then the conversation can be broadened
by asking students how often they see books not written in English or that have
translations included and what that means. Hopefully this will allow students to think
more deeply about what it would be like to be a student who had a different native
language and how that impacts their relationship with text and school.
7.a.) What kinds of appropriate supports for English Language Learners are provided in
Journeys lessons?
The most obvious support for native Spanish speakers is the inclusion of the text
My Colors, My World because it provides a Spanish translation. Not only are students
able to access the actual text, but they are also being indirectly shown that their language
and cultural is valued in the classroom. Furthermore, the unit as a whole provides
additional supports for ELLs as well as three specific activities in lesson 1. At the
beginning of the unit, the materials suggest that during whole group instruction teachers
should include scaffolds such as use visuals, use gestures, peer-supported learning,
sentence frames, and vocabulary in context cards (T7). Small groups can use an ELL
leveled reader (Friends who Share) that contains the same content as the on-level reader
but uses more accessible language (T7). Digitally, students can also find ELL leveled
reader online, vocabulary reader online, cross-cultural activity bank, multimedia grammar
glossary, and picture card bank online (T7).
Specifically during the lesson 1 phonemic awareness activity, ELLs are provided
Sound/Spelling cards in which teachers can name each picture, emphasizing the
beginning sound. Have children point to each letter, name it, and say the sound it stands

for (T16). In this case, ELLs can use visuals to help them understand what the word
means, then they can break down the word into letter sounds before putting the sounds
back together to pronounce the word as a whole. During the Words to Know task, ELLs
can use different scaffolds depending on their reading level. Beginners ask partners to
act out the meaning of the word help while proficient students have partners complete
and say the following sentence frame to each other: I like to _____ with you. Ask them to
act it out (T20). Students can use peer support as well as sentence frames to help
determine word meanings. Finally, when working with the anchor text, beginners can
work with a volunteer to demonstrate help such as by helping a child lift or find
something while proficient students can tell about a time they were able to help
someone else (T26). During these activities ELLs can work with native English speakers
to show their understanding of the word help. They get and give examples of what
helping looks like and they relate it to a time in their own lives when they were helpful.
Gregory explains, the most important lexical clue for children and adults as they read in
any language must be the extent to which the word carries deep personal meaning
(Gregory, 135). By connecting word meanings to something that the students have
experienced, students are more able to comprehend unfamiliar words, and in turn,
participate in the larger activities of the lesson.
b.) Briefly describe one way you could extend/revise these lessons to make them more
accessible and supportive of young English learners.
While it is important to work with ELLs on word recognition (lexical knowledge
source), these students would also benefit from more practice with common syntactic
structures, which in turn will aid students in predicting word meanings. Gregory supports,
In contrast with monolingual or fluent speakers, these children are unable to narrow
down the choice and predict words through a knowledge of the structure of the language
(Gregory, 141). The only way to improve their syntactic knowledge is to expose them to
patterns in sentence structures so that ELLs can become more familiar with these
structures. One extension activity for ELLs during the words to know task could be to
present sentences with parallel structures using the word help. After looking at the
sentences, you could ask students to brainstorm how the sentences are similar. You could
also use Elkonin Boxes in which students slide letters in a word up one by one so that
they could focus on each sound, then how to blend them, improving their word
pronunciation. Improving their lexical knowledge will in turn help their syntactic
knowledge and these two knowledge sources can continue working together to improve
ELLs ability to make meaning from words.

Works Cited
Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2014). Addressing CCSS Anchor Standard 10: Text Complexity.
Language Arts, 91(4), 236-250.
Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2013). Whats the Secret to Successful Close Reading? Strategic
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