Text 5- Don Quixote (ELL, Gender, Culture)

     The story of Don Quixote is about this mid 50's Spainard (75 year old male in todays age), that has read so many books about "caballeros andantes" (knight) that he wants to become one even when they don't exist anymore in Spain and he is nearing a late stage in his life. Everyone thinks he has gone crazy but no one can stop him from taking off with Sancho Panza, his escudero (squire). They go on to find adventures that sometimes don't even exist in order to protect the honor of his Dulcinea that he has never even seen before. He goes on and fights some molinos (mills) that he thinks are dragons, even after Sancho has warned him that they just mills. But he did everything for his beloved Dulcinea.

Citation : Garcia Gonzalez, Luis Ignacio. "::: El Caballero Don Quijote : La Aventura De Los Molinos :::." ::: El Caballero Don Quijote : La Aventura De Los Molinos :::. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.


   I believe this story can be hard to read if you are reading the old Spanish version, because I read it this way and it was difficult. There are some words in there that no longer exist today, but its still a very fun story. I wanted to use this book, but I didn't know how to make it easier to understand with language that we use today until I stumbled upon this link. I believe this link is great because it gives you the essence of the story without adding too many extra things. I think this would be great for an ELL student because the text is provided but so are pictures to aid with comprehension. When ELL students know their language and are still learning English, learning a third language can be very challenging. That's why being able to use this extra help will help everyone in the classroom. If students still need additional help, the link can be provided for them to explore and play a couple of the games that are appropriate, like the ones recognizing characters, ordering scenes and just general questions. I know I have a student in class that is an ELL learner and has an IEP as well and when she see's only words she becomes scared and thinks it is too difficult to follow and that's why a story like this would be good for her to see and build confidence as well. I believe Don Quijote also teaches culture because "caballero andantes" is something that was very popular in Spain. Don Quijote is legendary and is a book that was considered a best seller for years and years. Everyone today has heard of at least the name of the book I'm sure, because it is that famous. This also represents the values of the culture and also the value of women. Dulcinea was Don Quijote's prized imaginary possession. It shows the value of  women in this stage of Spain's society. Women were people that didn't do much if they belonged to upper or even middle classes. Women were supposed to be beautiful because you will never read a book written in this time period  that talks about an ugly women or even prostitutes. Women were thought of being sacred, but Cervantes did start breaking this ideal because he wasn't scared to add prostitutes as characters or women that lost their virginity. Because if you loose your virginity and you're not married then you lost your honor and everything that you have in life and you might as well die as my professor Dr, Lopez would say. This could then connect to maybe why some Hispanics cultures still think this way of not having relationships till marriage and why my mother still thinks that why too...

(I only know this because I took SPA 502 and it was all about Don Quijote and I wrote a 10 page paper about women in this time period)


http://nea.educastur.princast.es/quixote/index2.htm

Strategy 4- Comprehension (context clues)

As described by Kelly, comprehension can be further enhanced with the intentional use of context clues. While they are reading, students can be asked questions such as "Does that make sense? How can we make it make sense?" If the passage did not make sense, ask students to 1) read it again, 2) read to their partners, 3) stop and think, or 4) talk to their partners. Monitoring for meaning is a skill that struggling readers need in order to strengthen their comprehension of text.

This strategy is more like a scaffolding at the beginning because the teacher is monitoring the comprehension of students by asking questions that would help would understanding. They also have the opportunity to understand this a little more because apart from having help from the teacher, they are also receiving help from peers. Studying another language can be very overwhelming and one word makes the paragraph have a completely different meaning that's why it is essential to have these questions to make students look at the text again and make sure they are heading the right direction. This can be used anytime that the teacher believes the text is more difficult to understand or just anytime you get blank faces after reading a text. As a facilitator back in the day I often had students read legendas (legends) with me when it was close to Halloween. I would ask question after several questions and then I would get a general idea whether they were understanding well enough or if we had to revisit the paragraph with any clarifications of vocabulary. At the end students would share with their peers what they understood and then we would all join as a class. 

Kelly, Crystal, and Linda Campbell. "Helping Struggling Readers (Comprehension." Johns Hopkins School of Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2015.

Strategy 3- Comprehension

One of the things that Kelly Mentioned with one of the keys to comprehensions is that struggling readers "lack the ability to quickly recognize sight words". This lack of rapid word recognition limits comprehension for struggling readers. A strategy for this type of comprehension would be teaching or reteaching common words.  As also described in class, this strategy can also be used by having functional chunks, password phrases, and language ladders. This could be done by places key words that are used on the daily basis or that will be used in the following unit.

I believe that having the possibility to see these key words up in the classroom will be beneficial for the students. It is said that by seeing a word over and over again you learn it. When I go to my internship there are common words that students should know by Spanish 2, but unfortunately not everyone does. I believe these words would be beneficial as a reference for students to have. These functional chunks or words what are most common will allow students to figure out that sentence that they are struggling with while doing classroom. I find that students give up because they believe they don't know what it means. After I help them break it down they then realize that its not as hard as they believed it was. I believe also having the list of vocabulary at hand would help. This is because they will be able to reference it and remember it. Although it should be removed as the unit progresses because they shouldn't be dependent of this either. I believe the whole list should be up at the beginning and as the unit progresses, start removing some words and mention it so they can keep track of it.


Kelly, Crystal, and Linda Campbell. "Helping Struggling Readers (Comprehension." Johns Hopkins School of Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2015.
http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/strategies/topics/literacy/articles/helping-struggling-readers/

Text 4- Froggy se viste (Ability, ELL)

   This is story in Spanish that narrates the story of a frog on a snowy day. He wakes up and it is snowing and he is very excited. He gets up and runs outside and starts playing in the snow. But he forgot to put on all his winter clothes. His mother yells from afar and asks him to come back inside and put on his clothes. Froggy goes inside and puts on some of the clothes but forgets very important outside weather clothes. His mother calls him again and he comes in and puts on more clothes. But his mother calls him one more time because he forgot his underwear! He comes back in again and then be becomes tired and decides to take a nap because he is really tired.

London, Jonathan. "Froggy Se Viste." Froggy Se Viste. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2015.

    This is a really great book in different ways. This book focuses on the reflexive verbs in Spanish which is the unit that we are currently studying with in student teaching. This is a very simple book that has very good visuals to accompany the text with. These visual cues are very helpful to help students understand the story to a better degree. The book is for ability because it is book material that has many cues for struggling readers and even ELL. Because even if some words in Spanish don't make sense, the pictures help with figuring out what is going on. This book also serves to help students break in to groups and provide a student that is more proficient to be the dictionary person and the other person to read, and you are grouping by ability, but more of a helping role to the student.

Text 3- Libro de la vida (Book of Life) Movie (Ability, Culture)

     The Book of Life is the story starts off in a museum with a group of children that are then transported to the Land of the Remembered. It is here where Manolo goes through a journey in which he has to choose between his families expectations and going with what his heart dictates. Before he chooses what he does he goes through an adventure in three different unique worlds in which he had to encounter his biggest fears in life. This story also focuses on "El dia de los muertos" that is celebrated in Mexico and other cultural Latin customs and songs.
   
"The Book of Life." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2015.

This story was recommended by one of my professors. I think it is a great cultural reference. This talks about "El dia de los muertos" which is something often thought as being something funny to celebrate because you are essentially celebrating the dead. This gives students still the same cultural reference but lets them see it in a much more fun in creative way then just seeing a power point of reading about it in a book. I believe this also helps in ability because this is something more visual and not something to read so more needs of students can be met. This differentiated instruction could help students better understand the concept of el Dia de los Muertos in a much more fun way that is also a very 21st century way of teaching with the different effects of the movie. The movie would be shown with subtitles to for students that could be struggling with keeping up with the story line, especially for the lower levels.

Strategy 2- Variety of reading (stuggling readers)

            I think this is one of the most important strategies for struggling readers and goes hand in hand with texts that we have to choose for the Top Ten Toolkit. Teachers should be using a variety of reading. Beers states that this is that "teachers who encourage a wide range of reading, who give their students plenty of opportunity for sustained, silent reading, who read aloud to their students on a regular basis, who provide ongoing opportunity for sustained silent reading, who read aloud to their students on a daily basis, who provide ongoing opportunities for students to discuss." This strategy can be used at all times when reading or assigning a different book. This strategy would be beneficial for many reasons. I have had Spanish classes here where we only read about slavery the whole semester. Not to say that I hate talking about slavery, but its also not a topic that I would like to talk about for the whole semester. I managed to hang in there, but many students tuned out and even dropped the course. I believe being able to use a variety of readings helps students become interested and makes them feel empowered as to what they want to read. Even if the teacher picks the book, they shouldn't always pick the same genre or length because this will just expose them to the same vocabulary and style. Being able to have a variety helps by also "developing a positive attitude towards reading. I think this also goes along with choosing 10 different types of readings for this class for our future students. This is already showing us that we shouldn't have the same type of books or style for everything and they need to include certain things.  

Strategy 1- Direct and Explicit comprehension (struggling readers)

         One of the strategies described by Beers is Direct and Explicit comprehension. This would be defined by directly explaining to students strategies of comprehension. Then the teacher models and explains this . After this the teacher lets students practice this and apply it to different types of texts. This would be done by the teacher coaching students or any other more skilled reader. This should be accompanied by more examples and also and offer less help as they start understanding the strategy more.  Some say that this shouldn't be taught directly, but others believe that students could benefit from this type of instruction (Beers 37).  You can use the strategy whenever you believe it would benefit your students.  I believe my 8th grade teacher used this. I remember she told us to underline places and circle names and numbers. She would also tell us to write a note or two beside each paragraph so that we would remember what that was about. She would tell us to read the questions if there were any to keep a look out on them while we were reading. This was actually really helpful, because as a young struggling reader myself (still learning English) it was so easy for me to get lost and lose track of what I was reading. And even if I was reading I would not remember what I had read.