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Planning for Literacy within a Multidisciplinary Unit Plan

  My reflection in this blog is about how we can make sure a language is fully taught to diverse learners. The process and purpose of reading  Reading is defined as the cognitive process of decoding symbols to determine a text's meaning. The symbols are the text itself, and the process of decoding requires that the reader quickly match a symbol or combination of symbols (letter(s)) to a sound, and then recognize the patterns of sounds that create words. These words then convey meaning to the reader. Reading is an active process that requires both simple and complex components. The reader must have a basic knowledge of the symbols that create the language, as well as a vocabulary in that language, and an understanding of the grammar rules. In addition, the reader will use higher-level processing to determine the meaning of the text and author purpose, among other things. These components can be categorized into three processes of reading: Word recognition : The ability to see a...
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How to support families with resources and communicate data

  Families play a crucial role in a student's learning. So it’s also important to support them with necessary resources as well as better communication to help children at home. In this reflection, I’ll answer the following questions:  How to best support families with resources to aid in literacy development. How to best communicate assessment data results to students and families Home learning is defined as an activity that a child is asked to complete outside of the school day, either on their own or with an adult. That activity helps children to practice what is learned at school on the one hand and enables families to provide guidance or have an idea on what is going on in the child’s class on the other hand. Also, that is an opportunity for families to stay connected with their children in their learning process. To be able to provide that guidance, families need resources. Resources are very important as they contribute to maintaining that connection between the student...
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Impact of an information-intensive environment on both reading and writing

  Oral language lays the foundation for the reading and writing skills children will develop as they enter and progress through school. They will use oral language in all aspects of their education, in the classroom as they connect with their peers and teachers, and throughout their lives as they grow into adulthood. A student with a well developed oral language easily makes connections between what is written and what he uses to use on a daily basis according to the topic. For example a given student that has a particular word in his vocabulary reads it more successfully than a student that sees it for the first time; even though he can be mindful of the spelling for another time.  As an information-intensive environment is rich in terms of information, that impacts students reading and writing. In reading, students serve it as a reference or a live dictionary. I notice that with class discussions with my students.  In writing, the impact is huge. For example, students u...
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Contributing to a positive Climate and culture

  A classroom environment should be rich in terms of information. This information should be categorized as all of them don’t have the same goals. From classroom norms and expectations to students' works, they target the classroom users and have specific impact on them. I used to display students' work in my classroom for two reasons. The first reason is to enable students to reflect throughout their own work and the second one is to decorate the classroom. For example, after exploring a novel (reading), the students make a giant poster on the characters (the genealogy tree) showcasing the relationship among them. At any time they step in, they face their work, and are constantly learning from their own work and praising their creativity. Through that reflection, they can also realize their potential because at the beginning, they were not quite sure they could make it. Another benefit of that is with parents. Parents who come to my classroom learn something about their kids...
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Enhancing Student Vocabulary

  One day in my class, I asked students if it was possible to speak without words. The answer was yes, sign language. I rephrased “ apart from sign language, is it possible to speak without words? The answer was just NO.  Language is for use, as a Linguist used to say. We use it as a tool of communication. How can we enhance student vocabulary?  Enhancing student vocabulary works in diverse ways and aims at enabling students with the necessary skills to effectively communicate in both writing and speaking. Reading is a very important way of developing student vocabulary. We read what is written, and what is written is a message which is a combination of words. For example when reading, students get familiar with words in their morphology as well as in how they sound. At any level, reading is very important. It also nurtures the student’s curiosity as he can be asking questions on words. Another strategy that looks similar is word detective . This consists of reading and t...
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Evidence-based oral language and written experience

  Teaching is a matter of approach as well as learning. In this post, I'm going to make a refection on how comprehension is facilitated by evidence-based oral and written experiences . As American linguists used to say " language is for use, not for storage". As a tool, learners have to be able to use it, to touch it, and to feel it as well. Evidence-based practices refer to practices that are been shown to be effective based on actual evidence. There are quiet few from spaced repetition to intrinsic and extrinsic reward. These evidences consider all the types of learners. In language development both oral and written form, it looks to be a mater of  processing information. That process is facilitated by strategies called evidence-based practices . For example, a learner that teaches another learner a concept, that means he has a mastery of the concept as experience showed that students who tutor increase their knowledge in that area in the sense he can figure out his we...
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Readers and texts

 Reading is with a purpose as there is no free reading .  In this post, we are going to talk about our understanding of how the interaction of reader characteristics, motivation, text complexity and purpose of reading impact comprehension and engagement.  My name is Abdoulaye SAWADOGO, I'm from Burkina Faso. I teach French at the International School of Ouagadougou. In Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistic, reading is said as: " Perceiving a written text in order to understand its contents". Does it mean we read to understand, or we can read without understanding! As I said, reading is a form of communication as a message is read. That message is constructed, and in reading it, the aim is to deconstruct it, a process that leads to understanding.  First of all, the topic itself can spark the readers interest in the sense that he can mobilize his primary knowledge of the topic to better understand the written message. For example person that likes traveling is more ...
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From home Language to English Language

 Getting to a given language from one's home language is interesting as well as challenging. It's interesting in the sense it's a matter of having a clear reference to get to another language. It's challenging because new strategies should be developed to meet that learning demand.  Students are more likely spending more time together at school, and even out of school in some situations. As far as teaching is concerned, there should have no barriers in the teaching process. We can understand certain things just by making a connection to an event or something else; we connect to a reference and the similarities will enable us to understand. Languages can share a lot of thing in common form the alphabet to some grammar rules. Student home language is the primary linguistic tool to get to another language as well as student experiences.  As I said before, students spend most of the time together, and they know each other and are familiar to each other too. Scaffolding gets...
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Medium of instruction versus mother tongue

 Our life would have been different without a speaking language. Luckily, we use this tool, the language to exchange information, chat, learn, in sum to communicate: to take with, or to enable someone to get, and take with. Now that we use languages to communicate, this communication is only possible when those communicating use the same linguistic code: they speak the same language. In that regard, an African proverb states: "if you want people to understand you, speak their language". Something very important in that statement; "speak their language", this looks an order, an imperative, a command, a kind of urgency. it's not a question that calls a "yes" or a "no" answer.  In Europe, in Asia, in America, almost allover the world we have institutions that take care of people learning from the childhood to the adulth ood. These institutions aim at preparing these "guys" to be good citizens, by enabling them to get relevant "thi...
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