Instructional practices for scaffolding emergent bilinguals’ comprehension of informational science texts

ABSTRACT

In the telling case presented here, the instructional practices an exemplary teacher used to scaffold fourth-grade emergent bilinguals’ comprehension of a challenging informational science text are identified, analyzed, and discussed. Data sources included observation field notes, video and audio recording of 11 hours of instruction, the teacher’s post-teaching written reflection log, and two interviews. The findings yielded from systematic, iterative qualitative data analysis and constant comparative methods suggest that in the context of text-based discussions with informational texts, teachers can employ an array of instructional practices to scaffold emergent bilinguals’ construction of conceptual understanding. In particular, iterative readings, explicit attention to language, and engagement with multimodal representations of core concepts can create multiple opportunities for students’ analysis of both the language and meaning in informational science texts.

KEYWORDS:

• Instructional practices
• fourth-grade emergent bilinguals
• reading comprehension
• language development
• text-based discussions
• systemic functional linguistics

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Ms. Youssef and her students for welcoming me into their classroom and allowing me to study their teaching and learning; the Language and Meaning research team at the University of Michigan for their mentorship, friendship, and collaboration; and all the readers of this article for their time and constructive feedback.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education [R305A100482]; International Literacy Association [Steven A. Stahl Research Grant]

Notes on contributors

Carrie Symons

Dr. Carrie Symons is an Assistant Professor of Literacy and Language in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University, USA. Her research investigates how teachers can scaffold emergent bilinguals’ literacy and language development across content areas—in multilingual, transnational contexts—with a particular focus on the design of learning environments/experiences that foster immigrant-origin youth’s investment in learning, sense of belonging, and additive acculturation.