Two Reading Strategies for Reading and Teaching The Pearl with ELLs

Christine Rowland

I do not claim to have originated these strategies, but I have personalized various
strategies I have learned across the course of my career for use with my classes and
trust that you will do the same, tinkering to find an adaptation that optimizes learning
for your students. If I were teaching a more advanced group of ELLs, I might speed up
the initial reading stage of the unit by assigning more reading for homework, and asking
students to complete double-entry journals or summaries to partner their reading.

Strategy 1: Read/Discuss/Write
The class sits in a circle. As much as possible intersperse those whose English
comprehension is stronger with those who are at the earlier stages of English language
development. Ideally, students work in pairs, but this can also work in triads when
there are fewer stronger readers in the room. The teacher reads a passage or chunk
of text typically a paragraph in length, and read with lots of emphasis and expression.
Students then have two minutes to discuss together what happened in that paragraph.
Finally, students have two minutes to write down the most important thing they heard
in that paragraph. Then we move on and I read the next paragraph, etc. This is typically
repeated about 5 or 6 times in the course of a lesson. Students hand in their work as
they leave, which serves as their classwork grade, and also informs me of their degree of
comprehension of the text and also where there may have been misunderstandings.

I do vary this technique. Where I sense that a paragraph may be particularly challenging
I may elaborate a little or tackle it as a read aloud-think aloud, or take a smaller chunk of
text. Where the text is less complex, I may lengthen the passage I read. These choices
are a matter of professional judgment, only I would strongly recommend reading ahead
in order to determine length of chunk and your approach to reading it in order to do
the best possible job of presenting this to your students.

Why do I recommend that the teacher as opposed to students read aloud? Research
from the National Reading Panel discounted the use of popcorn reading as a strategy
that strengthened reading comprehension. It suggested instead that a strong model of
English was important for English Language Learners.

This strategy can be particularly helpful when you are reading a text that is longer, such
as a novel or novella such as Steinbecks The Pearl. As with all strategies, it helps to
model the strategy the first couple of times you use it, but the simple daily grading of
the classwork for completion (an entry for each chunk read), proved highly effective.
After all, there was no right answer per se, just an understanding of their degree of
understanding (or misunderstanding) of what we were reading. It is important to give
the students their work back at the beginning of the next class in order to have them
buy in and understand and appreciate their own progress. I actually give a classwork
grade for the work, strengthening buy in from my students.
Strategy 2: Closer Reading Digging Deeper

Select a phrase or sentence that you believe needs particular attention either because it
unlocks a key idea or reveals authors purpose or just because, syntactically or in terms
of vocabulary, it presents a higher degree of challenge. Pose questions and engage
students in digging deeper to unlock the significance of this smaller chunk of text.

To illustrate Ill use a line from The Pearl:

The essence of pearl mixed with the essence of men and a curious dark residue was
precipitated. (Chapter 3)

There are potential questions here around authors using figurative language. However,
particularly for newcomer ELLs I could predict a real issue with the use of residue,
precipitated, and to a lesser degree, essence and curious.

Firstly, Id have read the entire paragraph utilizing the read/discuss/write strategy. I
would ask students whether the essence of pearl and the essence of man are literal or
figurative. Then Id like them to think about what the curious dark residue might be. If
they are not able to predict, Ill ask them what strategies they might employ in order to
answer that question. Id hope they would be able to use the cues from the sentences
beyond to determine that the curious dark residue equated to greed. Needless to say,
wait time is sometimes critical. Do not get too concerned if students are unable to
come up with an astute response immediately. What matters is that they get there in
the end. If they cannot answer a question at that point, make a note to come back to it
later when they may be better prepared.

To reiterate, I would not read the entire text in this way, but would pre-select points of
text. There are times when the products from the read/discuss/write activity might
reveal a significant gap in understanding that may require going back and looking at a
particular section of text more closely.

Occasionally I come to close reading through reading student responses to the

read/discuss/write strategy, as I realize that students completely misunderstood a
particular passage or phrase.

Balancing these strategies makes it is possible to work through longer texts with ELLs in
preparation for critical analysis. I like to have students read and enjoy the story as much
as possible before beginning the more analytical phase of the unit.