Sixth International Conference on Immersion and Dual Language Education: Connecting Research and Practice Across Contexts

Paper/Best Practice Session (1 hour)

Spanish

Two-Way Bilingual Immersion

Guided reading is the heart of a balanced literacy program. Planning guided reading time right from the start of the year is crucial for language acquisition. In a small group setting, students start by building up oral language development, phonological and phonemic awareness to become independent readers.

In this session, I plan to share a successful practice in my DLI Kindergarten classroom. Guided reading is the cornerstone of my balanced literacy program. Planning guided reading time from the beginning of the school year is crucial for academic success. Students are grouped heterogeneously from day one, targetting skills in phonics, phonemic awareness, and phonological awareness by the first quarter. As these skills are mastered, students are regrouped by instructional levels to be taught reading skills such as reading behaviors, attending to concepts about the book, using picture cues, applying letter and sound knowledge in context, predicting and infering, among others. During a 20 minute period, the teacher and a small group of children talk, think and read through a text which offers manageable challenges for each reader. The same book is used for a week, with appropriate instruction for individual reading needs. In addition, language has an important role during this practice since it helps students build up they vocabulary repertoire and figure out meaning. Four groups rotate daily, and when not with the teacher, students work on the computer center where they listen and read computarized books, with a TA building up reading fluency (IDEL) or with independent reading time. One important piece of this practice is assessment. I created a data notebook that tracks students' progress and helps determining regrouping and differentiated instruction. Frequent assessmet and data analysis inform instruction and interventions to take place before students take state-mandated assessment such as IDEL or Running Records. Through my experience, I see that my students establish fundamental skills necessary for proficient reading in Spanish, improve attention to detail, develop reading comprehension skills, expand vocabulary knowledge of the new language, and perfom proficiently at state-mandated test.