All students benefit from evidence-based literacy instruction as detailed in this skill explainer, but some students may need additional language supports, scaffolds, or corrective feedback in order to fully access and generalize new skills. These instructional considerations are designed to help teachers recognize patterns in student performance, interpret what they indicate, and make responsive adjustments during instruction.
Students who are learning the English language, speak a dialect such as African American English, or those with a language based learning disability like dyslexia, may respond differently to your whole group instruction. The "errors" they make can feel random or be misinterpreted if you're unaware of what their response actually reflects.
Imagine this: Two students are engaged in a phoneme segmentation task. The teacher says "Segment the sounds in with." Student A responds "/w/ /ĕ/ /th/" and student B responds "/w/ /ĭ/ /f/." To maximize student learning, effective instruction depends on understanding what may be contributing to the error.
To best support your unique students, ask yourself these three questions:
1. Is the difficulty related to language acquisition, language variation, learning difference, or some combination of these?
2. Does the student demonstrate the skill in isolation but struggle to generalize it?
3. Does performance change when cognitive or language demands increase?
All of these responses affect how you respond instructionally to move the student's skills forward.
If you're ready to take a deeper dive into special considerations for your individual students based on their language background, visit our essential supports:
English Learners
Support students as they connect knowledge from their home language to English literacy instruction.
Students With Dyslexia
Understand how phonological processing difficulties can impact oral language.
African American English Speakers
Learn how language variation influences student's acquisition of academic English and how to use strengths-based approaches to support their interactions with print.
