HELP NEEDED: Background knowledge group

Hello, fellow El Ed people! I'm a school library media specialist, and this year I'm going to be helping the third-grade teachers by taking 10 students once a week for 30 minutes to help them develop background knowledge. Most of these students are from ELL families, some are new to our country, some are just new to our community, etc. The teachers find that many things most students are totally familiar with are entirely unfamiliar to these kids, from root beer floats to public pools, etc. Not only are there language barriers, but there are cultural and social barriers as well. So it makes teaching subjects like reading and social studies hard for the teachers! So my role this year is to build on their curriculum with activities that will help introduce these kids to what's being discussed in class.

One upcoming topic is immigration. While these kids may be able to relate to this concept, the vocab can be a bit challenging. The teachers haven't given me many guidelines w/ this group, so I have freedom to explore and just try things out. The kids also all have iPads. Can anyone recommend some ideas for a group like this? Have you tried anything like it in the past? I don't want it to just be a reading group or a vocab group; I'd like to expose them to the curricular topics in a variety of ways. I'd love any ideas at all! Thanks so much.

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Permalink Reply by Faith Rogow on October 3, 2014 at 1:35pm

Hi Kelly,

How about having the kids create their own "texts" for discussion by having each one use their iPad to take pictures of: one thing in their community they want to know more about and one thing that was new or surprising to them about their new community but that they can now explain to others. You'll end up with a collection that will help all the students decode their environment. If you can provide multiple ways to discuss, describe, and/or caption the pictures, perhaps in a mix of English and first language, they'll develop vocabulary. Best of all, each student will get to be both questioner and expert.

I also recall a video oral history activity that Melissa Wilson presented at a NAMLE conference a few years back. She was working with six year olds and had them tape a family elder in their first language. Prior to taping, teachers helped the children formulate interview questions. To prep for immigration units, you could focus questions on departure and arrival stories. After the taping, each child worked with a partner to edit the tape and translate it. The finished tapes were presented at an Open House - to much delight! In your situation, the tapes of the elders could become primary sources as classes study immigration. How cool would that be?

Permalink Reply by Kelly Farrow on October 4, 2014 at 8:48pm

Wow!!! What amazing ideas! Oral history and knowing one's own history and culture is so vitally important, not only to ELL kids but to ALL people. I love this idea and will explore it. I know their unit after immigration is diversity, so this also ties perfectly into that. Thanks so much.

Permalink Reply by Joan Axthelm on October 3, 2014 at 7:38pm

One strategy I have used to foster background knowledge with 3-5 grade ELLs is based on the work of Sugata Mitra and his work on SOLE (self organized learning environments). You can check out his toolkit here and his TEDtalk here.

The basic idea is to pose a question, a complex question with maybe more than one "answer", and have the students use collaboration and the internet to find as much about the question as possible. I had one rule - work together - in English as much as possible - to answer the question the best that you can. I always followed an answer with the question, "How do you know?" After a few times, they got used to me not telling, or even verifying, the answer.

I would pose the Essential Questions from the classroom unit plans. Questions like, "How is immigration in the U.S. today different than immigration in the U.S. in the late 1800's?" Using these question meant that I embedded the needed vocabulary.

I taught them basic strategies for a productive internet search (typing the question in the search bar never hurts, use images to understand vocabulary you don't know...), including deciding on which sources are the most reliable (see the information in more than one site? probably more reliable..), but that was about it. Then it was up to them.

Just like Mitra, I found that they often found answers and most of the time, they found relevant ones. It is quite amazing. Even when they didn't get the answer, they most definitely got a better sense of the question and the vocabulary around it.

I also got some good feedback from their classroom teachers commenting on how my students were better able to be part of the discussions. So, I feel like it was pretty successful. I would do the activity once a week.

I hope this is helpful.

Yours,

Joan

Permalink Reply by Kelly Farrow on October 4, 2014 at 8:51pm

Joan, this is enormously helpful!! I know at least one kid who's going to be in the group is very academically low (possibly developmentally delayed), so I can even bring this idea up to the resource teacher and see how she might work with him specifically on something like this. And the rest of the kids in the group haven't been determined yet, so as I learn their backgrounds and see what their needs are, I can tailor our time more specifically to them and encourage lots of collaboration among the group. Thanks so much for your ideas and insight!!

HELP NEEDED: Background knowledge group

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