Entry #5 ELL Books

I began this blog entry by searching through my classroom books trying to pick out a book that may affect comprehension for a child of a different culture. The only idea I could come up with was a vocabulary difficulty but I felt I needed more. Just then my Para ask why I was staring at the book shelf and looking so lost. I explained to her the assignment and my goals for it and she immediately said Dr. Seuss. My Para who is a Second Language Learner herself explained that she finds Dr. Seuss books to be very difficult to read a loud and also to understand. So I went with If I Ran a Zoo By: Dr. Seuss. This book would be difficult for an ELL learner because of the amount of nonsense words, unfamiliar animals, the story contains content that is not real and the sentence structure contains dialogue and rhyming. This story could be read to ELL learners with a proper introduction of vocabulary. The teacher could discuss the animals in the story using pictorials attached with the animals name. The students could particulate in an animal sort; animals you see at the zoo and animals you see at  Dr. Seuss' zoo. Also a discussion on make believe and real may make the story more understandable for an ELL learner.

The second book I chose to do was found in the room of my districts ESL coordinator. I have seen this book on her self many times and this time decided it was perfect. Faithful Elephants by:Yukio Tsuchiya is a story about war, people, and animals. The items in this text that would make comprehension difficult are the content, the vocabulary, the understanding of what war looks like, and the ability to follow the story from present to past. This story would require an introduction of what war is and looks like and possibly a discussion on WW2. The story tells of animals being poisoned to death which would need to be explained carefully and with full explanation as to why the animals needed to be poisoned. Children will need to know why a war happens and the teacher can create a brainstorm list of why wars happen and how they could be avoided also. The children could sort ideas of what happens during a war and what doesn't along with a vocabulary introduction. I couldn't imagine reading this story to my preschoolers without a month long introduction let alone reading it to children who wouldn't have a clue what I was saying. This story contains life stories, history, and real life experience that need to be understand in order to comprehend the story appropriately.