Week 8: Genres and Comprehension Activities for ELLs

I thought that this week's readings were very interesting because they furthered by understanding about different genres of literature. I enjoyed being able to read about each one and as I did, I began to reflect on books that I read when I was younger that came to mind. For example, when Tompkins talked about Fantasy books I thought of how I loved reading Harry Potter when I was in Middle and High School. I also thought it was interesting how Tompkins also talked about poetry in the text. I remember when I was in sixth grade and we had a unit on poetry. I remember enjoying it very much, but the topic was never revisited after that. I think that all children need to be continuously surrounded by these types of texts in order to best understand them. In my kindergarten classroom, my CT has a very large classroom library for her students that are abundant with many books from all the genres that Tompkins talked about. Even though the students are so young that they have no idea what type of book they are looking at usually when they select one out to read, I have started to try to ask them questions, such as, "What is happening in the book you are reading?" or "Is that like real life, or do you think it's more pretend?" Even though this is very basic it gets them thinking about the text a little more than they normally do.
Also, the Gibbons article gave some great teaching suggestions for gaining comprehension with ESL students. I thought it was interesting how it suggested activities broken down into before, during, and after reading so that it is very easier for a teacher to keep organized so that they can be implemented. I have actually used many of these activities when I have tutored Korean ESL students the past 3 years. For example, I always have them predict what is going to happen based on the pictures and other parts of the book. Also, I always have them reiterate to me the plot, the setting, the characters, etc. just so that they become very familiar with these terms.
I found it very beneficial to create a graphic organizer for all of these chapters because even though each of the chapters addressed a different issue or topic, I was able to make important connections between the content, which made it much more meaningful for me as a learner.