The Culturally Responsive Classroom

Diversity is an important topic culturally and academically in today’s society. Now, more than ever, it is essential and respectful to have a classroom environment that is culturally responsive. As teachers, we must be proactive in our cultural responsiveness and continue our own professional growth to leave the greatest impact on our students.

A culturally responsive classroom begins with the teacher. The teacher must perform a self audit to dig deep inside herself to discover the things that she does not look at or talk about (Rucker, 2019). It is time to stop ignoring student differences and start to embrace them. “Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) attempts to bridge the gap between teacher and student by helping the teacher understand the cultural nuances that may cause a relationship to break down-which ultimately causes student achievement to break down as well (Rucker, 2019). When lessons are made relevant to our students, they become engaged learners. This builds their confidence, widens their viewpoints, and affirms their value (ISTE, 2019). Relationships matter in the classroom, and the teacher must identify who her students are in order to lay the foundation of a welcoming classroom for everyone.         One of the best ways to build a culturally responsive classroom is through the classroom atmosphere and library. A culturally responsive teacher should examine the feel of her classroom. Do students have a voice about where they sit or how they best learn? How do they interact with each other? What books are they reading, and do they have a choice in them? When students see themselves represented in the literature, it is affirming for them (Ball State Immersive Learning, 2019). Multicultural literature is no longer defined as books about people of color or including vocabulary words of another language sprinkled within the text. This literature must be expanded to represent a variety of races, religions, cultures, genders, and socioeconomic status (Young et al., 2020). Education, primarily literature, can be the great human equalizer. It can take students from a limited scope of the world and broaden their cultural knowledge and give them a frame of reference for social interactions, future academic lessons, job interviews, and more (ISTE, 2019).         In the digital age we live in, the teacher has an array of resources at her fingertips to grow her own professional and cultural knowledge. Educational technology is an available, convenient, and universal form of communication and research. Part of a culturally responsive classroom is to form relationships with the whole family of the students.  Students succeed at a greater rate when there is a partnership between the home and school. Technological communication platforms are an ideal way to communicate with those parents and families who may not feel comfortable calling or coming to the school (ISTE, 2019).         Professional development is a key component to retaining highly qualified educators, as well as enhancing an individual’s cultural responsiveness. Collaboration is an important characteristic of professional learning. As teachers, if we are going to encourage student collaboration in our classroom, we need to embrace it for teacher learning too (Shearer et al., 2019). This promotes diverse perspectives, and what better way to grow in our cultural awareness than to have diverse conversations with colleagues of different backgrounds and experiences? Shearer et al. also suggest professional development should be differentiated. The teacher should be learning in the areas where she feels she needs the most growth and support. In a culturally responsive classroom, it is truly about knowing who your students are, so professional development should be centered around YOUR students (2019). In addition to making professional development relevant, informative, and transformative, there needs to be follow up from these sessions. A teacher will be more likely to reflect on and implement ideas presented in professional development settings, if the topic(s) addressed resurface again and are not dismissed upon completion of the training. The fact that professional learning is considered part of a school’s plan for improving sustaining effective instruction rings ever true for that of literacy and cultural awareness.         In conclusion, today’s educators must take a look in the mirror to determine their cultural responsiveness in the classroom. By incorporating a classroom library of diverse, equally representative literature and participating in relevant professional development, collaboration can be promoted and individualism honored in the classroom (ISTE, 2019).

References

Ball State Immersive Learning.(2019, January 9). Reading the wor(l)d critical literacy and
culturally responsive classroom libraries [Video]. Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1g-dx-meVA
ISTE. (2019, October 9). Creating a culturally responsive classroom [Video]. Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VixB5WBiLqE
Rucker, N. W. (2019, December 10). Getting started with culturally responsive teaching.
Edutopia. Retrieved February 9, 2022, from https://www.edutopia.org/article/getting-
started-culturally-responsive-teaching
Shearer, B.A., Carr, D. B. A., & Vogt, M. E. (2019). Reading specialists and literacy coaches
in the real world (4th ed.). Waveland Press, Inc.
Young, T.A., Bryan, G., Jacobs, J.S., & Tunnel, M.O. (2020). Children’s literature, briefly
(7th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc.

 

Digital Literacy Resources

            It is no surprise that we are living in a digital age, and it is important to expose students to printed and digital texts. The literacy world is ever growing with digital resources for readers, and the following are three websites that every reading teacher should keep in his/her reading toolbox.

International Children’s Digital Library

This website is an online library for children all over the world. The mission of this site is to promote diversity and acceptance by providing some of the best children’s literature in the world. Immediately upon connecting to the site, you can click on one of several links to browse the texts available. It is user friendly in that you can peruse titles by language, format, genre, characters, and more. Thousands of books are available to be read directly from the website, and that is highly appealing to students, and this is my favorite feature of the site. I can see this as a beneficial resource to connect to social studies standards, such as cultural celebrations, or used for reading lessons, like variations of favorite fairy tales. This is a valuable resource for teachers or parents to introduce students to a variety of worlds and cultures they might not otherwise ever visit. 

Epic

            The Epic online library is a resource I have used in my classrooms for many years. Students thoroughly enjoy this website and have referred to it as “Netflix for books.” Students can have individual log-ins to the site and browse and favorite their own books; however, without a parent paid subscription, the student free version deactivates at 3:00 pm each day. The site is engaging, and students quickly learn how to navigate its uses. One of my favorite features from Epic is the broad range of genres and topics in the system. Students can search titles from life cycles to biographies, coding to fairy tales, and classic chapter books to social-emotional learning texts. Along with being able to assign texts to students, students have options to choose self read texts or audio books. A word of warning is that students can search and possibly see books on topics that are not age appropriate. One should also be cautious of videos that are on the site and can be found during free searches as well. Overall, this is a great resource for parents to have hundreds of titles in one place for their children, and it is the perfect website for a listening to reading station for teachers in the classroom. 

LibraryThing

            The LibraryThing website is a database of more titles than you could imagine. This is a valuable resource for teachers of all disciplines and grade levels. Teacher resource books, picture books, young adult novels, new publications, and decades old titles are all available in the catalog. Searches for literature can be conducted by title, author, or tag (words associated with a title, such as genre or topic). Connected to each search are reviews, conversations, descriptions, editions, connected texts, and more. Study guides, author pages, and collections can also be accessed. While this may not be a tool to give elementary students free access to, it would be increasingly beneficial to secondary students for research. Teachers and parents alike, have virtually any title available to them at their fingertips to use as they see fit for their students.

These three websites are only a small fraction of the digital resources available to students, teachers, and parents who wish to be immersed in the world of literature. As our digital world expands, so will our technological sources. As long as the goal of these digital tools is to familiarize our students with literacy skills and texts, they are worth our time to explore and share with our young readers.

References

A home for your books. LibraryThing. (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2022, from
https://www.librarything.com/home 

Inc., E. C. (n.d.). Instantly access over 40,000 of the best books & videos for Kids on Epic.

Epic. Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://www.getepic.com/

University of Maryland. (n.d.). ICDL - International Children’s Digital Library. Retrieved
January 31, 2022, from http://en.childrenslibrary.org/

Selecting Literary Resources

     The goal of reading teachers is to get books into the hands of their students. Which books, though? Is there a specific criteria a teacher should follow to select appropriate texts? Let’s explore some best practices when it comes to selecting and evaluating literary resources.

Whether it be a class read aloud or a textbook adoption, teachers must determine which materials are best for their student population (McGraw Hill Education). Educators have to look past the traditional literature, memorable plot lines, and crowd favorites to what actually meets the needs of their students as well as their district’s expectations (Shearer et al., 2019). While choosing authentic literature that will support reading development is crucial to the text selection process, it is important to remember to include texts that will keep students engaged in reading. Careful text selection should include an array of reading levels, interests, topics, and styles. These titles should include recent publications, as well as those that have been loved for decades. 

Keeping in mind a classroom or district’s specific student population, a wide variety of genres and texts should make up a classroom library or district reading curriculum. One of the greatest areas of need in text selection is that of multicultural texts. While it is commonly thought that multicultural literature is devoted to storylines about minority ethnic groups, this definition is far too narrow. Diverse populations include people of differing cultural groups that cross color lines, religious groups, or even those with disabilities (Young et al., 2020). These literary works of underrepresented groups are where students are given the opportunity to see other worlds, compare their lives to another’s, and find themselves within the pages of a book (Reading Rockets). 

In this technological world in which we live, learn, and read, incorporating digital literacy into a classroom is just as important as hardbacks with pages to turn. The benefit of digital texts is that it offers students the chance to combine technological and cognitive skills to solve problems, collaborate, and create (Adobe). Reading and writing both functionally and critically allow students to be an active participant in the world around them. When selecting texts, or curriculum adoptions, choosing items that are offered both in print and digitally is a serious component to consider. The recently revised English Language Arts and Reading Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) state several learning objectives for students to master in both formats, such as utilizing dictionary tools (TEKS 3.3A) or delivering information in a written or multimodal format (TEKS 3.13H). Shearer et al. state, “To become fully literate in today’s world, students must become proficient in the new literacies of information and communication technology” (2019, p. 269). There are tasks and features that are not present in paper books that students must learn to be successfully literate in today’s world. 

No matter the format of the literature, it is most important that students are reading daily and across all disciplines. Today’s educators must be mindful of the impact text selection has on young readers as well as preparing them for future academic success.

References

Adobe for Education. (2020, October 15). What is digital literacy? cultivating digital literacy
[Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU1X3QpX-90

McGraw Hill Education. (2017, August 2). How to select materials for literacy instruction
[Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI4vs5Cqjdw&t=16s

Reading Rockets. (2015, January 30). Mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors [Video].

Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AAu58SNSyc
Shearer, B.A., Carr, D. B. A., & Vogt, M. E. (2019). Reading specialists and literacy coaches
in the real world (4th ed.). Waveland Press, Inc.
Texas Education Agency. (2017). Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for English Language
Arts and Reading. Texas administrative code. Retrieved January 29, 2022, from

https://tea.texas.gov/academics/curriculum-standards/teks/texas-essential-knowledge-and-skills

Young, T.A., Bryan, G., Jacobs, J.S., & Tunnel, M.O. (2020). Children’s literature, briefly
(7th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc.

 

Foundations of Literacy

The ability for a student to read accurately and fluently can take him/her to whole new worlds and a chance to soar in life and academics. There is much debate about the best way to teach a child to read, but whichever instructional method is used, the foundations of literacy (which includes reading and writing) do not change. Let’s explore those foundations and ways to improve students’ skills with each one.

Oral Language

This first component includes language that is spoken or read aloud. It encompasses language structures, pronunciations, and continual and stop speech sounds. It is important to take instructional time to focus on explicitly teaching oral language in order to enhance students’ literacy skills. This can be done with choral read alouds, rhymes and poems, dramatic play (readers theatres), games, classroom conversations and games, higher level questioning, and share time.

Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness is not synonymous with phonemic awareness. Phonological awareness consists of auditory only skills and includes knowledge of onset, rime, syllables, and knowing the sound structure of spoken words. This does not include letter/sound knowledge. Using classroom labels, sound structure play (such as rhymes), sentence segmentation, and games involving phoneme deletion or substitution with initial, medial, or final sounds will increase students’ awareness to hear and manipulate sounds in words.

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness falls under the phonological awareness umbrella. This idea is about word awareness, knowing that sounds make letters and letters make words. Phonemic awareness is the groundwork for reading success. Physical movement games are engaging ways to work on students’ phonemic awareness skills, such as: syllable toss, phoneme hop, and rhyming kick. Using tongue twisters, phoneme manipulation games, and silly songs also show students word knowledge to carry over into their reading.

Concepts of Print

This foundational component discusses the knowledge that print relays a message, as well as text directionality, parts of a book, and grammatical structures. Explicit and systematic instruction is essential for students to master an understanding of print concepts. Teacher-led modeled and guided reading are beneficial instructional strategies for concepts of print. Other ways to review concepts of print include: highlighting capital and lowercase letters and words, taking a punctuation hunt through a text, and preparing a print rich environment with books, posters, labels, and word walls.

Alphabetic Principle

Knowing the order of the alphabet, identifying and naming letters, understanding capital vs. lowercase letters, vowels vs. consonants, and letters vs. words are all aspects of alphabetic principle. To review or improve alphabetic awareness in students, a teacher can utilize letter sorts, bingo or matching games, decodable readers, predictable texts, and environmental print in the classroom.

Word Identification

Word identification can be referred to as decoding, but also sight word knowledge. It also includes correct pronunciation of complex words and making meaning of unfamiliar words. While there is much research supporting sight word knowledge through activities such as flashcards and sight word readers, there are several other ways to enhance word identification skills. Dividing complex words into smaller parts or looking for familiar words in an unknown word are important techniques to teach students for word identification in self selected texts. Heavy instruction on context clues and games with multiple meaning words are also methods to teach word identification habits. Reading by sight enables a student to read fluently and accurately, which leads to better reading comprehension.

Fluency

Reading fluency is defined as oral reading with fluidity, prosody, and accuracy. Reading with expression can also be taken into consideration with fluency. All parts that make up fluency play a large role in successful reading comprehension. Students must learn to heed punctuation and “scoop” words into phrases created by punctuation. Modeling appropriate phrasing and smooth reading with read alouds and repeated readings are essential ways to improve the knowledge and the act of fluency. Instead of a picture walk, prior to reading a text, take a phrase walk to find segments of text to read and make connections before diving into the text as a whole.

Comprehension

Using multiple theories and instructional methods, comprehension can differ across genres, but is vital to reading success. Making meaning of what is read, embracing new vocabulary, and activating the reader’s schema create comprehension skills. Storytelling and dramatic play to retell a story are formats for readers to demonstrate their understanding orally. Written responses in a literature journal will show readers’ connections made to the text. Using questioning tactics before, during, and after reading activates the readers’ comprehension in small parts to check for understanding throughout the reading as opposed to solely at the end of the text. A variety of book report versions, such as a poster, cereal box book report, multimedia presentation, or videoing a book trailer appeal to the students’ unique learning styles but will also show the meaning the readers derived from their reading.

Vocabulary

Books are a novel way to learn new content or cultural vocabulary, but a lack of understanding of the words that make up a text can also impede meaning. Exposing students to diverse lexicons is one of the best ways to use vocabulary to enhance comprehension. Stocking a classroom library with culturally and topically diverse books will open up students’ minds to an array of new words. Generating games or activities that use a dictionary or thesaurus also help students explore vocabulary. A Frayer Model is a simple but effective graphic organizer to show understanding of a new word, where examples and non-examples of a targeted word are created.

Written Language

Written language includes spelling patterns, grammar conventions, and handwriting. Throughout all of the strategies that can be used to develop written language skills, the constant thought must be to follow the progression and understand the development of this component in each reader. Writing opportunities should be offered for multiple purposes, audiences, and across genres. Students should identify the grammar conventions in authentic texts, do finger exercises to grow muscle and control in handwriting, and critique their peers’ writing to gain new ideas (give the classmate two “glows”) and share their written language knowledge (give the classmate one “grow”).

The foundations for literacy all work together to build a successful reader. Each student’s literacy journey will involve different literacy strengths and struggles, but by understanding these patterns and progressions, teachers can intervene when necessary to help propel their students into a love for literacy.

References

Carruth, L.B. (2018, November 30). Phonemic awareness: it's all in the sounds of language.
Texas Association for Literacy Education Yearbook. Retrieved November 4, 2021,
from https://eric.ed.gov/?q=phonemic%2Bawareness&id=EJ1291358.

Cassano, C.M.R. (2019, November 30). Phonological awareness in early childhood literacy
development. position statement and research brief. International Literacy Association.
Retrieved November 4, 2021, from
https://eric.ed.gov/?q=phonologicalawareness&id=ED61940.

Literacy How, Inc. (2020, September 15). Comprehension. Literacy How. Retrieved
November 23, 2021, from https://www.literacyhow.org/comprehension/.

Literacy How, Inc. (2021, October 12). Fluency. Literacy How. Retrieved November 23,
2021, from https://www.literacyhow.org/fluency/.

Literacy How, Inc. (2020, September 30). Oral language. Literacy How. Retrieved
November 23, 2021, from https://www.literacyhow.org/oral-language/.

Literacy How, Inc. (2021, October 18). Phonemic awareness. Literacy How. Retrieved
November 23, 2021, from https://www.literacyhow.org/phonemic-awareness/.

Literacy How, Inc. (2020, May 25). Vocabulary. Literacy How. Retrieved November 23,
2021, from https://www.literacyhow.org/vocabulary/.

Literacy How, Inc. (2021, January 20). Written expression. Literacy How. Retrieved
November 23, 2021, from https://www.literacyhow.org/written-expression/.

State Government of Victoria, Australia. (2020, June 16). Concepts of print. Department of
Education and Training Victoria. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://www.
education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/
readingviewing/Pages/litfocusconceptsprint.aspx.

Texas Education Agency. (n.d.). Reading specialist standards. Retrieved from November 15,
2021, from https://tea.texas.gov/sites/default/files/Reading%20Specialist%20
Standards%20-%20EC%20Grade%2012_0.pdf.

How to Keep English Language Learners Engaged

The diversity students bring to the classroom make our learning environments rich with uniqueness and learning opportunities. English Language Learners (ELLs) make up a large portion of our student populations, and it is important that as teachers, we reach out to these students and utilize strategies to keep them engaged in learning.

Create a Classroom of Relationships 

    It is vital that we establish relationships with all students, but making ELL students feel at home in our classrooms is of utmost importance. These relationships should include teacher-student connections, as well as peer relationships. An atmosphere of inclusion, acceptance, and celebration needs to be established. When you have a student’s heart, you will have a better chance of having his/her mind too. Each year, I incorporate a family heritage project into our social studies curriculum. This project allows students to take time to discuss family traditions and history with their parents at home before sharing those traditions with their classmates. The students love to hear about different languages spoken in their peers’ homes, holiday traditions, foods eaten, and how cultures different from their own celebrate life events. It creates a feeling of family and community in the classroom, where everyone is accepted, and the students are eager to learn about their next classmate’s family history. 

Involve the Whole Family 

    Students are more engaged in learning when their families are involved in the learning too. For example, it is common for schools to host literacy events, where the students and their families can attend. Making these literacy events cross-cultural is a way to invite English speaking and English learning families to participate. Presenting a bilingual read aloud is an activity that children of all ages and languages enjoy. My campus’ English language learners are predominantly Spanish speakers, so we choose a book that has been printed in both English and Spanish, but this activity could be done with any other language too. With two copies of the same story, just in different languages, two teachers alternate reading pages in each language. Families are captivated to hear a story being read aloud in their native language and to have their children immersed in a second language as well. Any opportunity to connect the school and home life is beneficial to these children and their learning. A literacy night with games and activities to be practiced at home in multiple languages, inviting parents to speak about their jobs in their native languages at a career day, and hosting parents as guest readers are all ways to tap into the funds of knowledge. Funds of knowledge are defined as cultural knowledge and skills that students gain from their family and household settings to strengthen the curriculum in their classroom settings (Cobb, et. al., 2011). These are skills and concepts that students can be experts in and share with peers that will enhance learning. English language learners will be more engaged when they feel their backgrounds and the knowledge they bring to the classroom are valued as a part of the educational process. 

Classroom Techniques

    Cultivating relationships and including the child’s family are the best ways to engage students in their own learning, but the following are best practice classroom strategies to aid English language and native English speaker learners alike in their learning. 

• Use visual supports. 
• Build in opportunities for group work. 
• Provide native language and English vocabulary labels. 
• Honor wait time, giving students time to gather their thoughts before speaking. 
• Pre-teach academic vocabulary and be aware of culturally unique vocabulary. 
• Use sentence stems for writing assignments. 
• Learn about the culture and background of the students. 

    An inclusive, engaged classroom is one of the most exciting places a child can visit each day. In what ways does your campus and classroom keep all learners engaged and reach the families of English language learners? 

References 

Cobb, J.B., Kallus, M.K., Moll, L.C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (2011). Chapter 17 Funds of Knowledge for           Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to Connect Homes and Classrooms. In Historical, theoretical, and                  sociological foundations of reading in the United States (pp. 270-283). essay, Pearson.

Vocabulary Strategies for the Classroom

        Understanding content vocabulary is the foundation for all school subjects. In order to make connections to a reading text, choose the correct operation to solve a math word problem, successfully conduct a science experiment, or understand the three branches of government, a student needs a solid grasp on the word choice and syntax of the content. Teaching vocabulary does not have to be an added stress or lesson for teachers. Try one of the following activities to assess your students’ understanding of content vocabulary.

Frayer Model

According to The Teacher Toolkit website, a Frayer Model is simply a graphic organizer with a target vocabulary word where students show their understanding by giving examples and non-examples of the chosen word (United States Department of Education, nd). As the teacher, pre-select the vocabulary you want the students to show they know. You can distribute the graphic organizers to students with the target word already written or students can write the word on their own. The target word is centered on the organizer, and the four boxes around it are to show mastery. Three sections are for the students to provide examples of the target word, and the last section is for a non-example of the vocabulary word. As with any new strategy, this should be modeled for the students with a common vocabulary word before assigning as independent or group work. Students can complete Frayer Models individually, with partners, or as group work, and then present their vocabulary knowledge to their peers. Frayer Models are best utilized to develop understanding of key concepts, drawing on prior knowledge to make connections, comparing attributes, critically thinking to find relationships between concepts, to make visual connections, or as test review. This vocabulary strategy can also be tiered based on student age and ability. Examples and non-examples can be written, illustrated, and can be given parameters. In addition, teacher choice can be used to decide if all sections should be examples, non-examples, characteristics, definitions, or another way to demonstrate knowledge. 

Three Column Chart

Practicing vocabulary with a three column chart is an effective and easy to use strategy in the classroom.  It can be prepped ahead of time or done spontaneously. I created this vocabulary practice assignment several years ago when my students were struggling to grasp and categorize science landform terms. The three column chart method allows for written and visual support for targeted content vocabulary words. Students can take a sheet of construction paper and fold it into three equal parts, or three columns can be electronically generated and copies made for students. Students record the vocabulary word in the first column. In the second column, they illustrate the word. In the last column, they write a sentence using the word in context. My students were able to use the vocabulary words in class discussions, as well as retain the meanings of the chosen vocabulary, as they showed mastery on assessments and use of these words in their writing. A benefit of this strategy is that you, as the teacher, have the flexibility to give the students as many words as you would like, add or delete columns, or change each column’s task. The three column chart works across all content areas, can be done with text, online, or video vocabulary terms, and can be used as a reference in content journals or as a graded assessment.

Vocabulary Word	Illustration	Sentence

Shades of Meaning

If instructional time is being used to teach and retain vocabulary words, we want to see those words being used in the writing of our students. Using shades of meaning provides students with synonyms for a chosen word, and this strategy can be kept as reference material for students to use in reflective or creative writing tasks. A shades of meaning strip can be created by hand or with technology, but a fun way to incorporate this strategy in the classroom is to collect paint strip samples from a local hardware store. You, or your students, select a word from a text or lesson and write it on the first section of the paint strip. On the scale of colors on the rest of the paint strip, synonymous words are recorded to show varying meanings of the targeted word. These can be done as collaborative student group work and posted in the classroom as an interactive word wall for students to access during literacy rotations or writing time. This strategy can also be implemented by students on an individual basis and kept in their content area journal of choice for future reference. The shades of meaning technique gives students a chance to refer to and utilize content vocabulary past the point of instruction. As students read, words can be added to the shades of meaning paint strips as new vocabulary is acquired.

vocabulary word

synonym

synonym

synonym

synonym

I would love to see how these vocabulary strategies work in your classroom or are adjusted to your content and grade level. If you have a vocabulary activity to share, please leave a comment below!

References

Region 13 Educator Certification Program (ECP) Transition to Teaching grant from the 

United States Department of Education. (n.d.). Frayer model. The Teacher Toolkit.

Retrieved October 29, 2021, from
https://www.theteachertoolkit.com/index.php/tool/frayer-model.