Strategy Application

 


 I am an ESOL teacher in FCPS and recently we have been given a new curriculum for our ELD ( English Language Development Classes) and so far I have really enjoyed using the curriculum in the text. Recently, we read an article in the textbook about the rising waters in Venice, Italy and the solution that they have come up with to solve this problem. Now this curriculum is paid to use so I couldn’t give access to the original article, but I did find one similar on CNN that I will use for this assignment.


The strategy I choose for this article was the “ Question the Author” the reason why I chose this method was because I felt that I almost naturally do this in my classes when I teach, and I felt that it would allow my students( Level 4s) to think for inferentially about what they read rather than simply thinking literally. For example, I asked them why they thought the water was rising in Italy. The article did not explicitly state that it was due to global warming, but many students used their background knowledge to come up with responses such as “ climate change” or “ the glaciers are melting”. Another example was students were confused about what a “ Moses” was. I told them well it is a name for the dam like system in Italy, but I think it also references something else or someone else. I have a a very diverse group of students: For example, some are Christian and some are Muslim. So we had a discussion about how this water prevention system was probably a reference to the story of Moses in the bible since he also parted water. We even asked our Muslim student if this was the case in her religion as well, and she replied that although the story was slightly different, it was very similar to the Christian version. Although we are not supposed to mix religion and education, talking about it in a non biased way allowed my students to understand the article better. 


To conclude, asking questions while the student is reading is a great annotation technique. It not only helps students make sure they understand what is happening, but it also serves to increase my students' class engagement. When walking around the classroom I heard so many in depth discussions and debates over certain topics in the classroom. Overall, I felt it was a really successful lesson and I look forward to using it in the future!



Buckley, J. (2021, December 29). The flood barriers that might save Venice. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/mose-venice-flood-barriers

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