Sociocultural Aspects of Schooling for English Language Learners

One of the major issues I have with the English language learners in my classroom is their reading comprehension. Many of my ELL students won't even attempt the homework from the book or the science articles. They have been taught that they are not good readers and have had no help in learning strategic reading methods. I hope to help my students overcome this injustice by teaching them how to read in science and providing graphic organizers that help them focus their reading. By pointing out the use of titles and subtitles and how to read graphs and the extra tables in the text, I can help ELL students focus on what the main ideas are in the text, rather than trying to decode every word. I think offering vocabulary words in Spanish may also be helpful in helping students make the connections between English and Spanish. ELL's often get lumped into the same category of illiteracy as students who are not English learners and forgotten that they may have a different set of needs to assist their literacy.