Reflection on Reading Supports for All by Fitzgerlad and Graves

1. What was the article about?

The article addresses, SRE, scaffolded reading experiences. The author claims that one of the new challenges facing literacy is multi-lingualism. This article focuses on how to provide scaffolding for ELLs, English Language Learners. Pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading activities help to scaffold students’ text experience. Since reading strategies and skills transfer, this method can be used in all content areas.

2. What does this article tell you about teaching students?

Reading is a very complicated task consisting of many simultaneous processes. Reading can be difficult even in one’s native language depending on the difficulty of the text, the reader’s ability, specialized lexicons, and the type of text. It can be further complicated if one is reading to learn new information, or reading directions to complete a task. Teachers must first decide what texts are appropriate to their students’ abilities and for the objective they wish to accomplish. Then they must make the text accessible by providing students scaffolding. In order for learning to take place, a text should be within a student’s zone of proximal development. While English Language Learners will greatly benefit from teachers using SRE, the benefits are not limited to ELLs. All students benefit from using SRE in the classroom.

3. Can this article be applied in your content area?

World Language teachers are reading teachers. Effective World Language teachers already use this type of SRE to teach students comprehension in the target language. Even simple tasks such as teaching new vocabulary in context is an example of applying this in the classroom. Any reading assignment I have encountered in a language classroom use prereading questions or a discussion about what is contained in the text, guiding questions or questions to consider while reading, as well as questions after to check to see if students really understood or gathered the necessary information from the text. Even upper level college language/literature courses often use this method.