Blog Post 5 - Children's texts

Blog Entry #5

Context: In addition to having to decode unfamiliar text, students are often faced with challenges because the setting of the book, vocabulary, and/or types of speech that may be new to them.

Task Description: Review 2 children’s books and determine what components in the book might affect comprehension because of cultural aspects. List 4 per book and tell how this schema could be taught or introduced to an ELL learner.

Delivery: Post blog entry by Wednesday.

Assessment: See Blog Rubric.

Forum Discussions: Now join your classmates in the Forum Discussion for this topi

The children's texts I chose were:

 It's raining Pigs and Noodles by Jack Prelutsky, the excerpt, as on Amazon.com is:

 It's raining pigs and noodles,
it's pouring frogs and hats,
chrysanthemums and poodles,
bananas, brooms, and cats.
Assorted prunes and parrots

are dropping from the sky,

Imagery is important in much poetry and Jack Prelutsky's is no exception.  Unless one knows It's raining cats and dogs" as an idiom as well as the meaning of the words in the poem, the humor in the poems is lost.  Humor is poetry is very context based. ELL students would have a challenging time understand why the other students were giggling at the poetry.  Strategies to understand would be to show the pictures in the book, ask students about idioms in their own language and preteach vocabulary when possible.

The other book I chose for this assignment is Johnny Tremain

the historical fiction classic of a boy in Revolutionary War time who befriends some of the framers of the Declaration of Independence and which gives a plethora of information about the times.  The book was written in the 40s and has some pretty complex voabulary words, long chapters and presumes a familiarity of the reasons behind the Revolutionary War. While the story goes into great detail and is a marvelous book, ELL students would find the language challenging and perhaps find the history confusion if they had not been exposed to it before.

I would suggest this book alongside a US History unit to flesh out the (often) dry history texts and to make connections between young boys of that time and young children of today.  Pre-teaching of some vocabulary would be imperative as well as perhaps some pictures and explanations of the household items used in the time period.