Translanguaging

When I think back on our readings and discussions about translanguaging, differentiated learning, and reading strategies by Tovani, I started to think about how I learned when my classmates and I were struggling on a reading. One thing my teacher had us do that was also strategies by Tovani was summary writing.

My teacher would break our reading up into two parts. First, for homework, students would read a chapter in whatever book we were assigned at the time. After reading it on our own we would write a summary before class then come in and read it together. After reading the chapter together we would edit our summaries after the group reading and discussion so we could make changes and point out what was cleared up for us.

This helped my class when we read Animal Farm in 8th grade and had a lot of trouble understanding it. For students who had trouble comprehension, sometimes the reading aloud helps them really "hear" what was going on in the story and understand more. It also helped students feel less "on the spot" if they didn't understand. They didn't need to worry about other students noticing that they didn't understand because, to a certain extent, all students needed some clarification.

For students who are learning English, I would use the idea of "Preview/View/Review" with writing the summary so that students can have a chance to use both their home and new language. By giving students a copy of the text in their own language, that way they can preview the readings and have full comprehension it to the best of their ability in their home language. By using these different strategies, both emergent bilinguals and  IEP students to understand what they are reading