Teaching English Learners

Emilio: The large spider may-ay, made me cringe.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Say "cringe."

Emilio: "Cringe."

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Look, let's cringe. Go like this.

Ooh, I see a spider. What am I going to do?

Narrator: Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan has devoted her entire career to helping English learners. As the founder of a tutoring center in Brownsville, Texas, she works one-on-one with children like Emilio, helping to develop their language and literacy skills.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: That was a good sentence.

Narrator: As a researcher, she's developed reading assessments and intervention programs, and she's written frequently for top academic journals. And for many years, Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan has crisscrossed the country to work closely with classroom teachers, serving as a trainer, mentor, and coach. In the following presentation, she explains what every teacher should know about working with English learners. She begins with the milestones for oral language.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Say it again.

Every baby in the whole world ... when they're born, what do they do? At three months, they make little noises. At six months they babble. Baba, mama, mom. By the way, they weren't telling you Mama or Dad, they were just playing with the language. By one year of age, they're using words. They're starting to use words, and they can get up to 50 words. Then they're two, and they put two words together: "More juice!" In my home language: "¡Más jugo!" Right? At three, now you see them bringing in pronouns: "I want juice." "Yo quiero jugo." And that's fantastic. But also what we see happening at the same time is the development of speech sounds. And we've got to be attuned to that. What sounds do they have in their language? Can they process the vowel sounds and produce them? What are some of the first sounds that appear in a baby's language? Sounds made with the lips: /m/, /b/, and /p/.

And those sounds can exist in so many languages across the world. But now they're at the age of three, let's say. And I just told you that they put three words together. They're now getting some sentence structure in there. But we also see that they're developing sounds, like sounds made in the back of your throat, like /k/ and /g/. By the time they're four, they're starting to do more sounds: /s/ and /z/. By the time they're five, they have so many sounds in their language. At the age of four, they're putting four words together. At the age of five, they're putting five words together. Now they're in first grade. By first grade, the students should have the speech sounds of the language, of their home language, right? But we want to make sure they at least have their home language sounds that are expected so that we can determine, oh, are there any issues about the sounds?

Can they process the sounds? Can they produce the sounds? Because how I process and produce the sounds will be how I read and write them. By the end of first grade, they should have all the sounds, so I want every first grade teacher out there to know, and every administrator to know, and every parent to know: listen carefully to the sounds that they're able to produce, and then think about ... are they on level? Because those are risk factors for future reading abilities. And we want to make sure that they develop these speech sounds and these language skills at that level. So, you know, when we are seven and eight, you speak in seven or eight word sentences, and that's fantastic. But what about English learners? What about those students who are just now developing their language?

We're going to understand that it's their second language and what opportunities have they had? So when you first come to this new language, guess what you're doing? We call it the silent period. It's not really so silent. But what it means is they're taking in this new language, and they're trying to figure out how it works. It's not that they're not learning. They're not yet willing to risk-take and speak to you. And then they move into those early production stages where they might speak in one- or two-word phrases or answer, simple yes-or-no questions. And then they move into, ah, now I can do some simple sentences. And they get really excited to share because now they are feeling much more confident because you have set up that environment. And then we say they move into the intermediate stage where now they're really conversing, they're engaging, they're going beyond the simple sentences.

They're speaking in more complex sentences. And finally they get to the advanced stage where we say it takes about five to seven years to get to that advanced language stage where they can communicate beautifully in this new language, and it's equal to their monolingual English speaking peers. So we've got to be patient, but we've got to be monitoring that second language acquisition. So every educator out there must know: what are those language milestones? What are they in your first language? And how does it develop in that second language, because we're going to apply that to our literacy instruction. It's very easy. If you're worried about some students that you can actually take a language sample and ask questions, engage them, ask them about what they did over the weekend. Ask them about, um, you know, what's their favorite hobby or their favorite sport, and get them to speak to you and to be a formal language sample.

And you can look to see what are the patterns that they have today? And can I explicitly work on some patterns that they need for tomorrow? And when I walk into classrooms, I see a lot of opportunities for students: sentence builders, sentence starters. But we need to get to the root of why aren't they speaking in complete sentences? What skills do they have? What does that syntax look like in their language? What does it look like in this second language? And how can I build upon that? Do they have the noun with the verb? Can they put a noun and a verb and an object together, right? Can they expand it with some conjunctions? Do they have pronouns? Do they have adjectives and adverbs? That's taking it from a very systematic and explicit approach. And that's what we do when we work with children that struggle with building those language skills.

We do it in a very systematic way. And I gave you what those milestones were: one-year-old, one word; two-year-old, 2; 3, 3; 4, 4; 5, 5; 6, 6; 7, 7. If they're speaking in seven- or eight- word sentences, I'm happy. You're good. But I really want to get at the connections that you can make. And what I like to say is that you do not have to know the student's home language in order to make those cross-linguistic connections. What you do need to know is ... what are those cross-linguistic connections? And I like to look up on the internet, mylanguages.org, and I find out ... what is the home language of the student and are there any connections to be made regarding the sounds of their home language and English?

Spanish is the most prominent language of our English learners today. So there are so many sounds. I actually counted 19 sounds that are exactly the same between Spanish and English. In Spanish, for example, we say, well, they have 22 sounds in their language. Some people will say 24. In English, we say there's 44 sounds in the English language. Some folks will say 46. Either way that you look at it, English has doubled the number of sounds than the language of Spanish. English has more sounds than many, many languages. But what about those connections? Some vowel sounds that are similar between English and Spanish will be a sound like /ĕ/, right? Or a sound like /ō/. Those are very related. A sound like /ā/ is ... actually, we have that in Spanish. We just represent it in a different way than it is represented in the English language.

The same thing with /ī/. And a lot of folks don't even know that even native Spanish speakers don't know about those connections when we think about literacy. And so these sounds exist, so sounds like /k/ and /g/, right? Sounds like /l/ and /n/ and /m/ ... those all exist across the languages. Same thing in languages such as Arabic. Arabic has some sounds like /b/ and sounds like /l/ ... those exist across the languages. Knowing those connections is so important and knowing how we can capitalize upon that, highlight it with our students. Now, what's going to be problematic in the English language? Oh my goodness. What's going to be problematic are those short vowel sounds: /ă/, /ĭ/, /ŏ/, /ŭ/, right? That schwa sound's going to be problematic. Also, our sounds like those digraphs, those two sounds like /sh/ and /zh/ and /ng/. But we can make connections with, okay, are there any approximations that we can make from their home language to English?

Is there anything that's almost the same? And I like to talk a lot about, for example, in the English language, and I even think about my dad having trouble with sounds like /ch/ and /sh/. And so those were challenging sounds, but I don't understand why /ch/ is a hard sound of English. In Spanish we have the sound /ch/, right? But when you have the sound in English such as /j/, that's a very challenging sound that we use the letter 'j' for that sound. We can use 'g' before 'e' or 'i' or 'y', right? Or '-dge' at the end of a word. But here's a little hint for you. I want you to get your hand and I want you to put your hand on your throat right now, right here. And I want you to say the sound for the 'c-h' sound ... /ch/, /ch/, /ch/. Do you feel any vibration?

Your vocal chords are not vibrating, but the challenging sound for our English learners is the sound /j/. So what I want you to do is I want you to say /ch/, /ch/, /ch/ three times. Now I want you to add voicing. Make your vocal chords vibrate. Say /ch/, but add voicing: /j/, /j/, /j/. Turn off your voice box: /ch/, /ch/, /ch/. Turn it on: /j/, /j/, /j/. That's a connection we can make. And when we do that, the students are like, I got it. I got this new sound that was so challenging. Sometimes when I work with teachers that they themselves speak English as their second language, they said, oh, that sound always bothered me, but you just gave me a connection that will help me so very much, right? Another connection that we can make is that oftentimes in the Spanish language, we pronounce all the vowel sounds, right? And so it's very difficult for us to not pronounce some of the vowel sounds. So that's challenging. The 'r' in English isn't trilled. We like to go /rr/, and we like to trill it. So we have to learn how to soften that 'r', right? How to soften that sound. But there's also connections because we have what we call the soft 'r' in Spanish, and it's when it's between two vowels. So here's my face, and the word for "face," for example, in the Spanish language is "cara." "Cara." The word for "hour," like what hour is it? "Hora." "Hora." "Cara." "Cara."

And what you're going to notice there is, I didn't trill that 'r'. We call it the soft 'r' ... "cara." "Hora." And it actually represents the medial sound. We call it a flap sound. The medial 't', like in the word "Katie." My niece is Katie, right? Or in a word like "letter" or "ladder" ... that medial 't' and 'd'. When a student writes 'l-e-r-e-r' for "letter," I say, good for you. Why? Because you've got the sound. You're just using your letter from your home language. The new letter is going to either be 't' or 'd' in that medial position between two vowels. And a lot of instructors don't understand ... why do they put an 'r' in place of a 't' or a 'd'? That makes no sense. I thought they trilled every 'r'. No, there's a soft 'r' that is the English medial 't' and 'd' sound. So that's so important. Another sound that's so challenging is the sound for 'th', like in the words "father" and "mother." And you know what's going to happen? Everyone look at your finger. I want you to say 'd-e-d-o'. "Dedo." Say it like me. Look at my mouth. "Dedo."

'D-e-d-o.' But that second 'd' ... I pronounced it differently from that first 'd', right? The second 'd' was pronounced like English /TH/. So when the children write "father" 'f-a-d-e-r', you're going to say, good for you. You got the sound. in Spanish, you use 'd'. In English, we use 'th'. And there's two sounds for 'th'. This one is going to be with the voice box on: /TH/. There's another one with the voice box off: /th/, like in "thimble" or "thistle." So those are connections to be made, and it helps us to understand those connections. Let's look at their reading samples and their writing samples. And from there we can figure out why are those error patterns? Errors inform instruction. Listen carefully. Errors inform instruction. So I look at that error, and that error tells me what I need to do. Why do they have that error? What can I do about that error? And so that's going to help me very much to inform instruction. It's an opportunity for learning. It's an opportunity for you and your teaching.

As we think about that foundational skill that we call phonological awareness, it's that ability to process the sounds, manipulate the sounds, and play with the language through sounds. And it's a foundational skill that we find can benefit reading in English and many other languages across the world. And so as we look at phonological awareness, one of the things we can capitalize upon and think about is first using the sounds that already exist from the home language to English. So I might want to say a word like "said" in English, and I know that I have those sounds in the Spanish language, so I might ask them, tell me the sounds of "said" ... /s/, /ĕ/, /d/. Let's use what you know transfers across languages. And this can help them to process the sounds and produce the sounds. So what's going to look different about this instruction, where you're playing with the sounds of this new language, is that you're going to add vocabulary to it and making sure that they understand what words they just produced and what words and sounds they just manipulated to form new words, right?

Can I form some words with those sounds and teach 'em those words, but have them process the sounds, produce the sounds, manipulate the sounds. And then that's going to be important because that tells us how well they're going to be able to decode and read. It's a foundational skill. And when we think about this, I'm going to start first with what they know, and then I'm going to start with some challenging sounds. So my phonological awareness instruction is going to look a little bit different because I'm going to specifically target a new sound. So I mentioned earlier that the sound /j/ is a challenging sound, right? So I'm going to say some words. Say the word "ham." I want you to change the sound /h/ to /j/. What's my new word? "Jam." Oh, it's that ... I have a picture of jam to show you. It's what I put on my toasted bread, and I can eat it and it's sweet. "Jam." Say it again: "jam." Very good. Say the word "hog." Now change it to ... change the /h/ to /j/. What's my new word? "Jog," kind of running in place. Let's all try and get up and run, run slowly. That's a jog.

Narrator: Now let's see what this looks like. Here's Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan working one-on-one with nine-year-old Emilio.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: So I want you to, say this word after me. Say "beanie."

Emilio: "Beanie."

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Very good. Now, I want you to change the first sound, /b/. Just listen. Can you change it to /j/?

Emilio: "Genie."

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: "Genie," like "I Dream of Jeannie." Do you know what a genie is? Tell me. Can you tell me in your words?

Emilio: It's like a ghost.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Like a ghost, okay. It's like a magical character that comes out and then can grant you all your wishes, right? Did you ever watch the movie "Aladdin"?

Emilio: No.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: No? You never saw that? Oh, right. So that "Aladdin" had a genie. I'll have to show you something about "Aladdin," right? Let's say the next word. Say "Kim."

Emilio: "Kim."

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Can you change the sound /k/ to /j/?

Emilio: "Gym."

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: "Gym." So I can work out at your school gym? Can you tell me a sentence with "gym" for your school?

Emilio: Can I go to the gym?

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Can I go to the gym? That was an excellent sentence. My goodness. Say the word "lent."

Emilio: "Lent."

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Can you change the /l/ to /j/?

Emilio: "Gent."

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Oh, he's such a gent. That kind of can be short for "gentlemen," right?

Emilio: Yeah.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Can you say the word "bell"?

Emilio: "Bell."

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Can you change the /b/ to /j/?

Emilio: "Gel."

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: What did you put in your hair this morning?

Emilio: Gel.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Gel. En español es gel. ¿Verdad? ¿Tienes gel?

Emilio: Sí.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: ¿Sí? Very good. Can you tell me a sentence in English with the word "gel"?

Emilio: I put my gel.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: I put my gel on ...

Emilio: ... my head.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: On your ... on my head?

Emilio: Hair!

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: ... on my ...

Emilio: hair

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: ... on my hair. Let's put it all together. I put ...

Emilio: I put ...

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: ... the ... 

Emilio: ... the ...

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: ... gel ...

Emilio: ... gel ...

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: ... on my ...

Emilio: ... on my hair.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Now you do it all by yourself. I ...

Emilio: I put my gel on my hair.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: That was an excellent sentence, and you also got our new sound /j/.

So what did I do? I expanded my phonological awareness by targeting a new sound. I had them do manipulation. I expanded it with vocabulary. I gave them some visuals, I gave them some verbal support, and maybe we could even create a sentence with it to work on that oral language as we're working on phonological awareness. Can you see how we integrated language with phonological awareness? That is an example of what you can do in your classroom with this foundational skill called phonological awareness. You can build language while you're doing that skill, and you can be very targeted in your instruction.

So we've talked about phonological awareness, that ability to process the sounds, manipulate the sounds, play with the sounds, which includes blending and manipulation and segmenting from a word into the sound. But now I want to talk to you about how we're going to link that to print. Very valuable, and we want to make those connections. So what I'd like to model for you is we know a challenging sound in the English language for English learners is the sound /j/. So I'm going to model for you how we might apply that and bring that sound to print now. That's called graphophonemic knowledge, taking that print, the grapheme, right, and linking it to the sound, the phoneme. So say these words after me: "jet, jam, jog."

What sound did you hear at the very beginning of each of those words? The sound was /j/. For some students, you may have trouble saying this new sound /j/, especially students who may speak Spanish in their home language. So what I want you to do is touch your vocal chords and say /ch/, /ch/, /ch/. They didn't vibrate. Now let's turn on our vocal chords: /j/, /j/, /j/. Now they vibrate. Since you have that sound for the 'ch' /ch/ in your home language ... it also exists in English ... but it is a pair with that new English sound /j/. It's a connection to be made. Now I want you to show you the letter. Look at the letter. Do you see? It's the letter 'j'. The sound is /j/. I'm going to give you a key word to unlock the sound. The key word is "jaguar." Can you say it? "Jaguar." Do you have that word in your language?

You do? "Jaguar." In your home language, you say /h/ for that letter 'j'. In English, look at the letter 'j' again. The sound is /j/. And I might use this picture of a jaguar to help you link and remember that new sound. Now we want to help the student not only have that phonological awareness ... we're linking the letter and sound together ... now we want to link it to print. And we want to have our students then move into that ability to read words with their new targeted sound. That's integrating phonological awareness with graphophonemic knowledge, getting on that journey to decoding and reading words and sentences.

I'd like to speak to you about phonics knowledge for English learners. We know that English has six types of syllables. In languages such as Spanish, we don't have to worry about it. Transparent languages. What do I mean by transparent language? It's a language such as Spanish ... Finnish is probably the most transparent language ... but it's a language where every single sound is represented by one letter, right? And the sounds don't change. So for example, in the Spanish language, there's five vowel sounds. /ŏ/, /ĕ/, /ē/, /ō/, /oo/ They never change. In English ... we call that an opaque language. We have vowel sounds, but they have more than one sounds. We can start with just short and long vowel sounds, right? The English language therefore has six syllable types, which helps us to know when to pronounce the short vowel sound versus the long vowel sound. And so one of the most common, common syllable types is when you have a vowel and then it's followed by at least one consonant, and that will make the vowel short, right?

So I might say a word like "ten" in the English language ... 't-e-n.' Hmm. That has the vowel sound /ĕ/ ... and the consonant after it: /n/, 'n'. I have the same pattern in Spanish: "ten." It means something totally different. It means, like, here! Have it! In English, it's a number. So that closed syllable is a very common syllable type. Another syllable type is when the syllable ends in a vowel. Vowels open the mouth: "a-e-i-o-u." We call that an open syllable. And that makes the vowel sound long, right? So I have in English the word "no." 'N-o.' I said /ō/ at the end. It's the long vowel sound. In Spanish I would say "no," but the vowel never changes. So I never learned about open syllables. So by you teaching me a closed syllable ... that it ends in at least one consonant after that vowel, the vowel's short ... and you teaching me that when it ends in a vowel, I'm going to say the long sound.

I'm not going to say /ŏ/. I'm going to say /ō/ for "no." And then we can practice the differences between the closed syllable and the open syllable. That's a wonderful activity for English learners. We also have in English a vowel followed by a consonant and that silent 'e', like in the word "dame." I said the long 'a' sound and it was followed by the 'm', and the 'e' was silent. In Spanish, I have 'd-a-m-e.' We say "dame." Means give it to me, but in English it's "dame." And what's really going to be problematic is you're going to ask me to not pronounce that final sound. We have no silent vowels here. It's very difficult for me to take off that vowel. But you taught me: a vowel, a consonant, and an 'e'. And I do see most first grade teachers do this syllable type, so that's wonderful. But we want to make the connection to the home language if possible. And then we have two vowels together. Those are called the vowel pair syllables. The vowel pair syllables have two vowels in that same syllable. And you have to be careful. We're going to have to teach each one. You know that rule? When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking. It's only true less than 50% of the time. I might have a word like "pie" in English: 'p-i-e'. "Pie." Do you know I have that same kind of word ... 'p-i-e' ... in Spanish? "Pie." Right?

And it's also this kind of vowel pair, as well, of putting it together in the same syllable, but it means foot. So you say "pie," I say "pie," right? So I need to learn, and you're going to have to teach me every single one of those vowel pairs. And then I have a vowel followed by that 'r'. And in Spanish, we'll say /rr/ for our 'r', and we say every single sound. But a word like in English ... 'm-a-r', right? "Mar." In Spanish, "mar." For me it means ocean, right? But I'm going to have to learn not to trill that 'r', and I'm going to have to learn that that's only one syllable, right? And only that 'a-r' making one new sound. So you're going to have to teach me, and you're going to have to teach me 'a-r', 'e-r', 'i-r', 'o-r', 'u-r'. You know, it's very, very difficult. When you have 'o-r', like in a word like "doctor," "doctor." Notice I said /orr/ in Spanish. It never changes.

But in English, the 'o-r' changes. If I say a word like "fort" or "corn," I heard 'or' in that accented syllable. But when I say a word like "tutor," "doctor" ... oh, it's unaccented. Now I know to say /er/, but no one ever taught me to do that. Then that's why in English, I say, "docTOR," "tuTOR." You have to teach me about accent, and you have to teach me when 'o-r' is not accented, it's going to say /er/. Same thing with 'a-r': "star," "car," "far." That's an accented syllable. Those are one syllable words that are accented, or I can say "carport." But when you say something like "dollar" or "collar" ... oh, now I have to learn ... it's in the unaccented syllable and I'm going to say /er/. And then in English you have that 'w'. Oh, it messes us up. When I have that 'w' in front of 'o-r' like in "world" or "worthy," that 'o-r' now is going to say /er/. Or I have the 'a-r' after the 'w' ... "warm", "warn." The sound changes.

So we have to learn about that tricky 'w'. So those are connections that we can make. But also in languages such as English and Spanish, we have syllables at the end. We call them in English the final stable syllable. So words like, that end in '-ble' or '-cle' or '-tion' and '-sion'. So a word like "cable" that has that final ending '-ble' ... we call that a final stable syllable. I have the same thing in Spanish ... '-cable'. But I pronounce that last 'e'. Remember, it's not silent. In English it will be. We'll just say '-ble' at the end, "cable," right? And in that case, it means kind of the same thing across the two languages. So by teaching me very explicitly and systematically the structure of the English language and teaching me those syllable types, you're going to help me to understand when I read how to pronounce those vowels and how to read. And that really is going to help me to be a better decoder and get better at that automaticity of reading that will lead us, we hope, to better fluency and comprehension.

Now, what we're going to do is we're going to read words, and we want to have some targeted reading practices for our students. And what that means is I would have given an example of that letter 'j' that says /j/. Well, now we're going to have words. I taught you about closed syllables. So every one of these words is going to have a closed syllable. So what I want you to do is I want you to prepare the first row of reading. Look at the words on the first row, everybody. Prepare. Ready? Read. And so they might read like "jam" and "jet" and "jig." Now read with fluency. And then we would hear them read those words very fluently. But now I'm going to bring in language skills as we're practicing decoding, I want you to look at the very first row, and I want you to read the word that rhymes with the word "pig."

Can you read the word? That was right. "Jig." Wonderful reading. And remember, the jig when we go fishing, we can jig the line or had the jig to help me with my fishing. Let's look at the next row. I'd like for you to prepare, get ready, and read the words. All of the words have your targeted sound /j/ in a closed syllable. Ready? Read. And then they would read, and they'll see there that there's words like "Jim" and "job" and "Jack" and "Jen." Now I'd like for you not only to read these words, but read them with more fluency. See, I heard some choppiness there. And so then they can have an extra read if you didn't hear that they were reading it with ease, right? Or we can go back and kind of check some of those challenging sounds. Now, can you read the words? I want you to think about vocabulary.

Can you read the words that would be a person's name? Can you tell, read me two words that are a person's name? And then they could read something like "Jim" or "Jack." Now I want to ask you a question. I want you to think about the use and the syntax, the grammar. Read the word right there on this third row that can not only act as a noun ... a person, place, or thing ... but also can be a verb ... showing action ... and also can be an adjective ... describing. Think about it. The word is "jet." Good job. "Jet" can be like an airplane. We're going to jet out of here when we're done today ... leave quickly, right? And I have jet black hair ... describing my hair ... or an inkjet printer. So that word "jet" can be used in different ways as a noun, a verb, or an adjective.

We're adding spice to that boring decoding practice. We're bringing in language skills, phonology, vocabulary, syntax. Now let's get to the highest level: pragmatics. Prepare students. Remember, we're reading words that have that new sound /j/. They all have closed syllables. Ready? Read. Then the students will read. If I heard some choppiness, read it with fluency. Now, now that you've read these words, I want you to think. I'm going to give you a phrase. If I were to say, "I was only kidding," what word could be used instead of "only"? Ready? Read the word. The word is "just." Let's use it in a sentence. I was just kidding. Great job. So I just demonstrated to you how I can take this new knowledge of learning letters and sounds, learning the syllables, getting to read words, but also to think about the language: the sounds, which we call phonology; the word meanings, vocabulary or semantics; the syntax, the parts of speech that I was trying to get to, that they had multiple uses and multiple parts of speech; and the pragmatics, all about the use, the sayings, the idioms, that kind of thing. And when I do this as a routine, guess what the children are thinking? They're already thinking at a deeper level. She's going to ask me a question about the sounds. She will ask me a question about the meaning. She's going to ask me about the use. She'll ask me about the part of speech. I'm going to have to say it in a sentence. I'm going to have to come up with some kind of saying. They're already thinking on a deeper level. And it's just not reading words with no meaning and with no use. It's incorporating language skills as we're working on literacy skills.

Now I'd like to speak to you about reading fluency for English learners. Our students need opportunities to practice reading connected text, and of course it's going to be controlled. We want to make it what we call decodable ... able to read. So I'd like to make sure that you know that English learners for fluency will need great work on that phrasing, knowing about how we phrase in the English language. They'll need help in working on building what we call prosody, that expression, that inflection, adding what we call the super segmental features of the language, the spice, adding the icing to the cake. And so as we look here, I give you an example of a passage ... "Artisans." They've been talking about the jobs that people do. And here we have the controlled text. But what I might also do is not only have them read the text, but I might do some pencil swings to help them follow along and know about that phrasing.

So let's look at the first sentence together, everyone, and let's look at how we will phrase. It'll be my turn first. "Jim makes rings for his job." Your turn. Remember those pencil swings. You can make those pencil swings. Ready? "Jim makes rings for his job." The next sentence ... "The rings are for men and women." Ready? Read. Phrase it. "The rings are for men and women. Jim rubs the rings with a cloth." Your turn to read it how I phrased it. "Jim rubs the rings with a cloth." Very good. So that's just a few examples about how we might work on that phrasing with the students. Really, these are foundational skills. Building fluency is a foundational skill, and we know that the more fluent a reader is, the more likely they're going to be able to get to comprehension. But please know, just because that English learner reads with fluency does not mean that they're automatically going to understand everything.

And so not only would I work on building that fluency, then I can ask questions related to comprehension, like who is Jim? What will you say his job is? Oh, you said he makes rings for a living. What do you know about the person who makes rings for a living? That's called a jeweler. Remember, we practice that /er/ sound at the end. It means the one who. The one who makes jewels is a jeweler. So yeah, even though this is controlled text, we can expand and give opportunities to learn about other words. Sometimes we're like, oh, boring, controlled text. But we can add to that and expand upon that and relate to them. This is important. So building that fluency is necessary for building that comprehension. But for an English learner, I want to work on that oral language proficiency, and I want to make sure that they have the vocabulary that we can extend beyond that passage that we just read and practiced with that fluency.

Now, I'd like to speak to you about vocabulary and some of the best word learning strategies for vocabulary building amongst English learners. One of the best strategies includes cognates and what we call cognate awareness. What's a cognate? A cognate is a word that looks very similar across languages, similar in spelling, and it's also similar in meaning. And there are many cognates that exist across languages, and they can be related to English words. And so this cognate awareness can really help our students. And I give an example of "canoe" and how in the Spanish language it's canoa, right? And in other languages you can actually picture the word in German, even in Vietnamese, that word for "canoe." But we have to be careful about what we call false cognates. False cognates are words that look similar in spelling, but they're not quite the same meaning. So one of the famous ones between Spanish and English would be embarrassed, embarazada. One means you're embarrassed. The other one means you're pregnant, right? So you got to look up. Don't forget, don't just assume because they look similar in spelling that they're similar in meaning. And one of the ways that you can help the students is by thinking about cognates and introducing them around a central idea. For example, when I speak, for example, about occupations, and I think about, wow, look at all the words that are similar, especially in the Spanish and English language. Some report that it's 25% or 30% of words can be cognates. But here's what I want to tell you. I can study about occupations. Here's my central topic. And I might have word like a carpenter. In Spanish, that would be carpintero. In English, I can say architect. And that would be arquitecto, right? Or docTOR, doctor. So when we think about cognates, it's very wonderful to introduce them. But I want to go a step further with the cognates. So let's think about that word carpenter. Let's make sure you processed it correctly. "Car-pen-ter." Put your hand under your chin. Let's see how many syllables it has in English: "car-pen-ter." Ah, you open your mouth how many times? "Car-pen-ter." Three times. Ah, it has three syllables. Let's try it in Spanish. "Car-pin-te-ro."

Ah, how many times did you open your mouth? This time it was four. There was actually four vowel sounds. Every time you're producing a vowel sound and every time you're opening your mouth, that's a syllable, cause every syllable has one sounded vowel. So that's how it's different. Carpenter. Carpintero. Right? I can also have them think about the sounds in the word carpenter. Let's see, students. Can you get the sounds? We're getting at the phonology, the sounds. /c/-/ar/-/p/-/ĭ/-/n/-/t/-/er/. How many sounds? Seven. Now let's see in the Spanish language. Be careful with this one: /c/-/a/-/rr/-/p/-/ē/-/n/-/t/-/ĕ/-/⟨r⟩/-/ō/. That's like nine. So we had more sounds, right, and more syllables in the Spanish language. And really it is true if you look at English words and words that are fancy words and have lots of syllables are probably Latin based words. And that's a hint to you that I can make a connection and maybe a possible cognate there.

Now, I not only want to get to the sounds and the syllables, the phonology, I want to get to the meanings. What is a carpenter and what does a carpenter do? I needed some cabinets for my kitchen. And the carpenter came and he brought the wood and he made the beautiful cabinets in my kitchen. That is what a carpenter can do. Now, can you use the word carpenter in a sentence? I described what happened in my kitchen. Can you think of how you would express that? The carpenter created beautiful cabinets for the kitchen. Very nice. Now a carpenter is a person, right? So that's a noun, and you used it as a noun in that sentence. So here I'm not only teaching the cognates, I brought in the sounds, I brought in the words, I brought in the word meanings. We're thinking about if there's any meaning units in there. We're also thinking about using it in a sentence and making sure we used it as a noun. And so that is bringing in language skills while I'm teaching this wonderful strategy for English learners. It's so useful. Some of the best word learning strategies: cognate awareness, having an awareness that these words across languages are similar in spelling and meaning.

Another excellent word, learning strategy is what we call morphological awareness. Oh, 60% of the English language comes from Latin. So what a benefit. What a benefit for our students that they can also see that many of the words from their home language can also be used in the English language and they're connected. And there's many prefixes, roots, and suffixes that transfer across languages. And so we should take advantage of those. And I like to use a root like auto, right? En español, "auto." I said it in Spanish, right? So 60% of the English language. And what's really beautiful is another, about 15% comes from the Greek. And between those Latin and Greek roots, wow, we can have terrific vocabulary in the English language. But how would I teach it? I would teach it the same way I do cognates. I would bring in those language components, right? So if I was talking about the ending, right, of "-ist," like artist, pianist, dentist. What did you hear at the end of each of those words?

You heard "-ist." Let's figure out the meaning. Artist. Oh, do you have any of those words? Do you have the word "artist" in your home language? What is it? "Artista." Oh, you said "-ista" at the end, right? Do you have the word "pianist" in your home language? "Pianista." There it is. Do you have the word "dentist." "Dentista." Oh, so it's sounding like "-ista" is your ending for "the one who." What does a pianist do? This is the person who plays the piano. What does a dentist do? That's the person who does what? Fixes your teeth when maybe you have a toothache, right? What does the artist do? Oh, the artist creates art. So we have these endings that are the same across languages, right? So we can go through the sounds. We can go through those word meanings. "Art" and "-ist." Can you use the word "artist" in a sentence for me?

Can you use the word "pianist" in a sentence for me? Can you use the word "dentist"? What part of speech is that? Those are all nouns. The person who. A person is a noun, and you just put it together in a beautiful sentence. You used it. So we went through really bringing in language skills as we were teaching that morphological awareness. And when our students understand, ah, I can make those connections of the morphemes across languages, I say they have meta-morphological awareness. We're going to do this so much that they start to use it as a strategy when they come across words that they don't know. They're going to look for those meaning units within words. They're going to look for those prefixes, roots, and suffixes to build words. And this is an excellent strategy for increasing the vocabulary levels of our English learners.

Now, I'd like to speak to you about reading comprehension. Some of the best strategies for reading comprehension really include that there's comprehension monitoring, and we want our students to be able to do that. But as teachers, we need to be monitoring comprehension. We know that having them collaborate with one another and engage with one another can also build that comprehension, using, being strategic and active with our reading. But we also want them to be answering questions and generating questions to make sure that they got to the gist of what they were reading. We know that they have to have the sufficient vocabulary to get to that comprehension, and we know that when they have opportunities to summarize, that summarization is so wonderful. So what I've done is I've tried to make it simple for you, and I want you to think of this acronym: 3-P-V, 3-R-Q.

All right, that's that 3-P-V, 3-R-Q. And let me tell you what the three Ps stand for. I'm bringing in the best evidence that we know of today. The three Ps. The first P will begin with the purpose. We want our children and our students to focus on what's the purpose of what we're going to be reading. We can prepare a connection, building that background knowledge, seeing what do they know and what can I add to their prior knowledge. They can make a prediction and see if their prediction comes true regarding the passage that they'll read. We can build vocabulary. That's the V, making sure that they have enough vocabulary. And maybe there's some challenge words in there. The Rs will be for having them to, they'll read, we'll review with them what they've read. But here's something important: retelling. We're not only going to have them retell, we're going to ask questions. But more importantly, we're going to have them generate questions. That really extends beyond what they've read.

So remember that passage of "Artisans"? I might've started it like this: students, today, you're going to read a passage. If I said the title was "Artisans," what would you predict that it's going to be about? That's right. Maybe the persons who create art. Now let's think about this: art. What can be considered art? You're right. When you draw something or when you see a sculpture or when you make things, anything can be, I'm not very good at art, but I wish I were. But anything that you make can be considered art. Like, oh, maybe I created a beautiful dress. Oh my goodness, it's a piece of art ... a beautiful painting. And as they're reading, remember we build upon that fluency and we want them to understand what they've read. So I might do a review. What was this passage about? Who were the main characters in the passage?

What did they do? How did the text end? But I also wanted to make sure that they understood the vocabulary words like "content" and "zigzags." I don't know if they know it, depending on their oral language proficiency. You'll make those decisions. But giving the students the opportunity to not only have that model of a review, that model of a retell, then they can begin to summarize. And then we want to ask questions. And these questions should only, not only be basic questions, but higher order questions, too, right? That how and what if? And then we have them generate their own questions. So it's question answering and question generation. So 3-P-V, 3-R-Q involves that purpose ... what are we reading; that making that connection, preparing a connection; making a prediction; reviewing any vocabulary that they may need to know in order to understand the passage in front of them; having them read not only once, but maybe for building fluency and comprehension. We review with them, we model a retell, they retell, right, and then they answer questions. But more importantly, they generate questions. And when you use this 3-P-V, 3-R-Q, you are putting together those eight comprehension strategies that are identified by the National Reading Panel report. What's also important is to take the students beyond what they're able to read. Now I'd like to speak to you about read-alouds. We must have interesting texts that we bring in that's above their reading level so they have opportunities to expand their world knowledge, expand that vocabulary, relate to maybe something that they've been learning about or maybe something that they're learning in other subjects. And so in one of our studies, we were doing science and mathematics. And so we brought in read-alouds related to those subject areas. And what that gives them an opportunity is to develop that vocabulary, that listening comprehension, build that world knowledge, and also experience high levels of words, high level ideas as they're getting that language, as they're learning that literacy.

I'd like to close just thinking about that English learners need opportunities. They need opportunities to read texts, but they have to have had those foundational skills, the foundational skills of phonological awareness and phonics. They must build their fluency while we're always working on vocabulary and comprehension. You must be a language teacher. Bring in those cross-linguistic connections. You can do this. You are a teacher. It's up to you to do this work. And just because you don't know, you don't know that home language, it's okay. You can know something about its structure and its connections because you're going to be teaching English and you're going to be teaching English language and English literacy skills in everything that you do. Every teacher is a language teacher. Whether I teach language arts, whether I teach science, whether I teach math, you're a language teacher. You're a literacy teacher. And the only way to get to those high levels of content knowledge is to be a good reader. And as we think about our future, we will depend on these children. We will depend on our youth. They're our future leaders, and they're smart. They just need you to teach them in the way that they learn. And you must use their language, they're home language as an advantage. It's an asset. I'm bilingual and biliterate, and I get to do this talk today because of that asset.

Narrator: Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim and Donna Barksdale, the Hastings/Quillin Fund, an advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the A-F-T, the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and anonymous donors. Connor McDonald of Sagetopia was our multimedia producer. Our video editor was Mandana Tadayon. Our field crew was Edwin Noe Mendoza, Jessenia Vidales, and Arnold Martinez. Tami Mount was project manager, and Noel Gunther was executive producer. If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel at R-U Teaching. Reading Universe is a service of WETA, Washington, D.C., the Barksdale Reading Institute and First Book.

[music]

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: [laughing] Now you’ve got it. Say gerbil! That’s a new word for you! Alright. Ready?

[music]

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Hi, Emilio. How are you doing today?

Emilio: Good.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: ¿Cómo estás?

Emilio: Bien.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Muy bien.

Today, bilingual reading expert and speech pathologist Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan will be working with Emilio, a third grade student at Kenmont Montessori School in Brownsville, Texas.

Emilio is learning to read in his second language, which is English, and he's facing two challenges that all English learners face: learning spelling patterns and sounds that are different from his first language (which is Spanish) and learning English vocabulary. Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan has chosen to target the /j/ sound today with Emilio.

Let's watch as she takes Emilio through a thoughtfully planned reading lesson that covers:

• producing the /j/ sound,

• spelling the /j/ sound with the letter ‘g’,

• building English vocabulary with Spanish cognates,

• and fluent and expressive reading.

And notice how Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan embeds oral language and vocabulary knowledge throughout.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: I first met Emilio when he was four years of age.

He was in a dual language program, which means, you know, half of the time is spent in Spanish, half in English.

It was the Spanish reading that gave him the confidence to take a stab at that, that English reading, to really say, oh, okay, it's the same. I think I can do this.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan and Emilio start their lesson today with a listening game … playing with sounds.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Today you're going to learn a new sound in the English language. Alright?

And we're going to play with the sounds. Alright? So I want you to, say this word after me. Say beanie.

Emilio: Beanie.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Very good. Now, I want you to change the first sound, /b/. Just listen. Can you change it to /j/?

Emilio: Genie.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Let's say the next word. Say Kim.

Emilio: Kim.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Can you change the sound /k/ to /j/?

Emilio: Gym.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Gym. So I can work out at your school gym? Can you tell me a sentence with gym for your school?

Emilio: Can I go to the gym?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Can I go to the gym? That was an excellent sentence. My goodness. Can you say the word bell?

Emilio: Bell.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Can you change the /b/ to /j/?

Emilio: Gel.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: What did you put in your hair this morning?

Emilio: Gel.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Gel. En Espanol es gel.

Notice how Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan explicitly compares Spanish and English during this playful sound exercise. And she brings in word meanings … since it’s crucial for English learners to be familiar with the meaning of the words they are decoding.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Every single one of the items that I did today was targeting that new sound and that new pattern, and I added the vocabulary that went with them; and I also had them extend it into a sentence. So I brought in some vocabulary and some language use as we were working on phonological awareness, and that didn't add too much time.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Can you tell me a sentence in English with the word gel?

Emilio: I put my gel on my hair.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Oh, that was an excellent sentence. And you also got our new sound /j/, and you actually learned the sound /j/. Do you remember what letter we used before when we learned it? It was the letter what?

Emilio: ‘j’

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: The letter ‘j’. Can you say the sound? /j/

Emilio: /j/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: I worked with him in really producing that sound of /j/. He had already practiced it and knew it in those kind of early phonological awareness and phonics concepts of that letter ‘j’ is most common in the English language for /j/. He also knows that the letter ‘g’ says /g/ both in Spanish and English.

But both in Spanish and English that letter ‘g’ changes when it’s before ‘e’ or ‘i’. And so I wanted to show him that pattern and show him that there’s a new, a new kind of sound for that ‘g’ in English. It’s /j/. And as you saw, he used his Spanish knowledge of /h/, right. /h/. So ‘g’ before ‘e’ says /h/ in Spanish, and in English it says /j/.

Now Emilio is ready for a direct and explicit lesson on his new spelling pattern … using the letter ‘g’ to spell the sound /j/. It’s a tough one for Spanish speakers, so Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan takes her time to make sure Emilio gets it, starting with accurate articulation.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Today we're going to learn another way in English that you can say /j/ with another different type of letter. I want you to listen. Say the word gelatin.

Emilio: Gelatin.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Gentle.

Emilio: Gentle.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Genie.

Emilio: Genie.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: What sound did you hear at the beginning?

Emilio: /jŭ/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: /j/. Can you say it really short? Say /j/.

Emilio: /jŭ/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Oh, I heard you say /jŭŭŭ/. Let's say /j/.

Emilio: /j/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: That was better. Say /j/.

Emilio: /j/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: It's a sound that's clipped; and I didn't want him to stretch it out or add another vowel sound, because when you read, there's not going to be an extra vowel there. It's, you have to watch the next vowel that comes after it.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: /j/

Emilio: /ch/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Ah! That was /ch/.

Emilio and Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: [laughter]

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Remember? Put your hand on your throat. Say /ch/, /ch/, /ch/.

Emilio: /ch/, /ch/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: It didn't vibrate. Now remember how we did the /j/ … /j/, /j/, /j/.

Emilio: /j/, /j/, /j/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: It vibrated alright? But we're not going to say /jŭŭŭ/, are we? No, no.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: When I was showing Emilio to … and demonstrating to him that he could touch his vocal cords and feel that when he was saying /ch/ for that ‘g-e’, instead of saying /j/, he said /ch/ … that he could feel that it was voicing /ch/. And the very same sound of /ch/ … if you add your voice, it becomes the target sound /j/ that I was looking for.

By giving immediate feedback and explaining the differences in the two sounds, Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan is ensuring that Emilio develops good habits from the start.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Alright, so we have a new way of showing that. Let me show you the letters. The letters are ‘g-e’, and our word is genie.

Emilio: Genie.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Look. See the picture of the genie? Have you ever seen anything like that?

Emilio: No.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: No? Okay, so that was … oh, see where the genie comes out? Yeah. Can grant magical wishes. Like “I give you three wishes,” right?

Emilio: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: So say ‘g-e’.

Emilio: ‘G-e’.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Genie.

Emilio: Genie.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: /j/

Emilio: /j/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Very good. And en espanol is /h/, /ā/,

Emilio: /h/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Genio, /h/

Emilio: Genio, /h/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Genio, /h/. Pero in ingles: ‘g-e’.

Emilio: ‘G-e’.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Genie.

Emilio: Genie.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: /j/

Emilio: /j/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: So when the ‘g’ comes before the ‘e’, the sound changed from /g/ to /j/.

Emilio: /j/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: There you go. That was perfect.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: So now we're going to practice some of this reading. So let's look here. So all of these … what do you see that looks the same?

Emilio: ‘g’.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: What letters?

Emilio: ‘g-e’.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: ‘g-e’. What letters?

Emilio: ‘g-e’. ‘g-e’. ‘g-e’. ‘g-e’.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: They all have ‘g-e’, right? So let's prepare row one. You think you can read them? Okay. Read the first word.

Emilio: Gerum. Germ.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Uh huh. There’s not an extra letter there. Germ.

Emilio: Germ.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Oh, I don't want to get any germs. Do you?

Emilio: No.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: No? Okay. Let's try this one.

Emilio: /jŭ/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: /j/

Emilio: /j/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: /er/

Emilio: /er/, /b/, /ĭ/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Let’s divide it. Here. Let's divide it right here. /jer/

Emilio: /jer/, /bĭl/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: I had him work on the finer features where we were having him work on accents. See, that's really challenging for English learners, knowing okay, typically you accent on that first syllable.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: And we say it … let's think about how we accent it. Can you say gerbil?

Emilio: Gerbil.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Where does the accent fall? How do you produce it? What's the precision of that production?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: We're going to accent the first syllable. Gerbil.

Emilio: Gerbil.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: That's a, that's a, a type of little rodent, little animal. Let's try this one.

Emilio: Re, gent. Regent.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Very good.

Emilio: Gen, tle. Gentle.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Okay.

Emilio: Gem.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Say it again?

Emilio: Gem.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Gem. Look, my ring! It has a gem. What color is it?

Emilio: Red.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Red.

Next, Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan and Emilio will work on dictation, sometimes known as spelling or encoding.

Dictation: /j/ Spelled with ‘g’

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: So now what we're going to do … this is … oh, I don't know if you're going to like this, but this is spelling time. [laughter] I know spelling can be quite challenging.

In this part of the lesson, Emilio will reinforce the sound-letter connections he's been practicing. Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan will say a word with the /j/ sound, and Emilio will write it down, using what he's just learned to pick the right letters. He’ll need to be careful to use English spellings instead of Spanish right now.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Let me see. I want you to look and listen. Look at me. And I want you to say this word after me. And remember our pattern. It's going to have what letters?

Emilio: ‘g-e’.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Oh, you were right. Ready? Say gem.

Emilio: Gem.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Wait. Tell me the sounds

Emilio: /j/, ‘e’, /m/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Oh, that says jeem. It's /j/, /ĕm/. Again.

Emilio: /m/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Again?

Emilio and Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: /j/, /ĕ/, /m/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Alright. Write … aaah! What letters did you use?

Emilio: /j/, /ĕ/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: ‘g’.

Emilio and Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: ‘g’, ‘e’, ‘m’.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: And that spells?

Emilio: Gem.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Gem. Very good.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: I want you to write the word geeenie.

Emilio: ‘g’.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Ah, that's in Spanish.

Emilio: Oh, I know. ‘g’. Geee …

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: That ‘i-e’ is saying …

Emilio: Oh!

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: … ‘e’. That's right! Geee-nie. What letters did you use?

Emilio: ‘g’, ‘e’, /n/, ‘e’, ‘i’ …

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Can you name the letters? ‘g’, ‘e’ …

Emilio: ‘g’, ‘e’, /n/ …

Emilio and Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: ‘n’, ‘i’, ‘e’.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: ‘g’, ‘e’, ‘n’. Let's say the sounds: /j/, /ē/

Emilio: /ē/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: /n/

Emilio: /n/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: /ē/

Emilio: /ē/

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Genie.

Emilio: Genie.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Oh, spelling. You did it.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Okay. Tell me a sentence with gem.

Emilio: I have a gem.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: All right. Let's write that sentence. Right. We'll get some writing in. I …

Emilio: I … have … a gem.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Very good. What do we need at the end? A period. All right, number two. Let's try giant. Can you think of a sentence with giant? Tell me the sentence first.

Emilio: I seen a giant. [writing] I … seen … a … giant.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: What do we need at the end? And we … so you said, “I have.” And remember the contraction “I've.” ‘i’, ‘v’, ‘e’. I've …

Emilio: … seen a giant.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: I've seen a giant.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: The last one is a genie. Can you think of a sentence with genie? Remember what the genie looks like. That was a new word for you.

Emilio: Hm. [writing] I … saw … a … ge … nie.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Okay. And remember, that's in Spanish.

Emilio: So it’s an ‘e’.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Mmmhmm. I didn't even have to tell you. You fixed it. How do we do it in, ah-ha. And what do I need at the end? All right. Read your sentences to me.

Emilio: I have a gem. I seen a giant. I saw … I saw a genie.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Very good. But I wanted to extend your sentence. “I saw a genie in the bottle.” And let's see if you remember ‘-tle’ at the end.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan and Emilio: … in … the …

Emilio: bot …

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: … tle. Oh good, you … you remembered that doubling. Very good. Alright, let’s erase.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Nice work. Nice spelling and writing.

Developing English Learner Vocabulary Using Spanish Cognates

Now Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan will take some time to work explicitly on vocabulary with Emilio, in addition to the vocabulary she's been dropping in throughout their time together. English learners have a wealth of existing knowledge in their home language. English vocabulary instruction helps them access that knowledge and boost their reading comprehension.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Now we're going to move to some of our vocabulary. We've been talking about different musical instruments, and I want to show you some pictures of some instruments. All right. Do you have … do they have anything at school where you get to play instruments?

Emilio: Nope.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: No? Nothing at your school?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: So in the lesson, I was introducing vocabulary that was related to a central topic and used what we call cognates. These are words that are similar in spelling and meaning across languages.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: What do you see there? That’s called what?

Emilio: Violin?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: A violin. Very good. This one is like a tuba. So these are instruments. In Spanish we say instrumentos. This person is in charge.

Emilio: He's a conductor.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: He's the conductor. In Spanish, conductor, right? Do those look the same in Spanish and English?

Emilio: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Almost, right? What looks different between instruments and instrumentos.

Emilio: Mmm … that instead of … they add an ‘o’ at the second one.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: They added an ‘o’ at the end. Right? So how many more letters does it have? Count them?

Emilio: One.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: It has one extra letter.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: This is an excellent word learning strategy, knowing that words are similar across languages in meanings and spelling. Now, I not only asked about the meaning, I was asking him to tell me some of the sounds that he heard in the words, how they were similar, how they were different, how many syllables they had in them, whether he was familiar with that, how you pronounced it, what were the differences?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Ooh, this one looks the same.

Emilio: Tuba. Tuba.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Very good. This one …

Emilio: Cheely …

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: This one is clar-i-net.

Emilio: Clarinet.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: En español clarinete.

Emilio: Clarinete.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Let's see if that one has more syllables. Clarinet.

Emilio: Clar-i-net.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: How many syllables?

Emilio: Three.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: And clarinete?

Emilio: Ca-dee-men-te. Four.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Clarinete … has four. Very good.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Teachers can really incorporate cognates in, into their instruction, and you don't have to know the language to do that. You can very … I mean we have so much at our fingertips with, you know, the internet; so we can very quickly look up, you know, what would be that word in this language?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: This is a what? You told me already.

Emilio: Violin.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: And in Spanish we have it with an accent: violín, right?

Emilio: Violín.

The next step for Emilio is reading a passage that includes the cognates they just reviewed. Each repeated reading gives Emilio the chance to practice the elements that make up reading with fluency: accuracy, automaticity, and expression, which reflects his understanding of the text.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: All right. So we're going to do now a passage about these instruments.

Emilio: Yeah.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: All right. So let's prepare sentence one, and let me see how you read sentence one.

Emilio: The music director spoke to us about musical instruments.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Next sentence …

Emilio: The director said that the musical instruments are —

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Instruments. Let's put the accent on the first syllable. Instruments.

Emilio: — are very different.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Students who are brought up in bilingual, biliterate homes who are in dual language programs, they’re going to need a lot of work on that phrasing and that intonation.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Whistle.

Emilio: The clarinet has a sweet …

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Do your pencil swing …

Emilio: … a sweet tone.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: … tone. Oh yeah, because we knew that there was a comma there. Very good!

Emilio: Ready tone … reedy tone.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Pause after the word sweet. Pause after the word sweet cause there’s a comma there … sweet [exaggerated pause] reedy tone.

Emilio: … reedy tone.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: That’s good.

Emilio: The tuba is a giant instrument and has a, has a very deep, mighty tone.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Oh, you did it like that … deeeep, mighty tone. Good job!

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: In the initial repeated reading, he was just trying to read each of the sentences. And then I had them really listen and try to do the phrasing.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Let me get my timer here. Now you know how to read with some fluency, right, and you’re also going to read with the phrasing. All right. Are you ready? Begin.

Emilio: The musici- the music director spoke to us about musical instruments. The director said that the musical instruments are very different. The trumpet is shiny and had a nice brassy tone.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: And through the repeated readings, I hope you noticed that he began to improve. He began to kind of monitor his own phrasing, and he began to use more inflection in his voice and became more confident in that repeated reading.

Emilio: The ladies, gentlemen in the symphony sat in the semicircle facing us, so we were able to see every musician. The symphony was a magical experience.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Wow! You did it! Give me five. Give me five. That was awesome.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Sometimes we say that it's so boring. This decoding practice. But you know, you look at the student and they're getting excited because they see that they're reading it. Okay. I read it okay. But now I'm adding these extra features of phrasing and, and more expression. And it's not boring to them. They feel success and they get excited and they feel more confident so that when they come across another text, they’re gonna remember: you know, I can do this!

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan now asks questions about the passage … to make sure Emilio understands what he’s decoding.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Now, who said that the musical instruments are very different? Who said it?

Emilio: The director.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Can you tell me in a complete sentence?

Emilio: The director said that the musical instruments are very different.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Where did the ladies and gentlemen sit that were playing in the symphony?

Emilio: In a semicircle.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Tell me in a complete sentence … the ladies …

Emilio: The ladies in the, and gentleman in the symphony sat in a semicircle.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: That's very good. Alright …

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Today, I learned a lot about him, and I learned about what went well, what he needs more practice on. And I know what I need to do tomorrow.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan:All right. We'll end our session today. Since we've been talking all about all the wonderful things that music brings to us, I want to talk to you about a very special person. Her name is Celia Cruz.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Can you say that?

Emilio: Celia Cruz.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: We have to differentiate our instruction to meet the needs of our students. And you can teach these students and some of them will have the opportunity

to be in dual language classrooms. The majority of them will be in English as a second language or English medium classrooms. But you can still bring in their assets, what they, what they know, and you can connect to that. And you don't have to know the language in order to do so.

Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim & Donna Barksdale; the Hastings/Quillin Fund, an advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (opens in new window); the AFT (opens in new window); the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation (opens in new window); and anonymous donors.

This video was produced by Noel Gunther, James Allgood, and Christian Lindstrom.

Our video editor was Mandana Tadayon.

Our field crew was Edwin Noe Mendoza, Jessenia Vidales, and Arnold Martinez.

And our narrator was Danielle Famble.

If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe to our YouTube Channel … at-R-U Teaching.

Reading Universe is a service of WETA-Washington, D.C., the Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book.