The Three Little Pigs
While I have I been working with second graders at B.F. Day Elementary I have come across a number of students within the class who speak a different language at apart from English, one spoke Somalian, another Dutch and another Spanish. All being very diverse and all facing similar problems in their academics. Some students have problems with their reading and therefore need more help in understanding the books they read with me while others are struggling but excelling with some help on my part. I helped the Somalian boy with his reading a lot by having him tell me the story in a different way since he had memorized the story and wasn’t actually reading to me. He had some problems with understanding what the story was actually about. We were reading the Three Little Pigs, one of his favorites and clearly he had read the book many times since he would just say most of the words without looking down to read them and fly through the pages. I then had him close the book and tell me what the story was about and what he thought it meant. He had some difficulty recounting the story and so I had him go through the book only looking at the picture and tell me what he thought was going on based on the pictures. This went a little better and he seemed to enjoy reading the book even more. I then had him tell me why the last pig succeeded and he told it was because he was the smartest pig. I was so excited to have this young boy finally understand what this book meant and to actually slow down when reading, to actually look at the words and pictures to understand what was going on in the storyline. And so we continued our reading with a similar routine. I hope he has improved and I think he will, though English is not his first language, he can use different tools to help him in his reading, these same tools, stopping and looking at what is actually there and using whatever is present for context will help in other situations. On the playground when someone is playing a game he does not fully understand, instructions his teacher gives that he does not completely follow, etc. I think he will be able to use these same tools from reading a story about three pigs and translate it over into the rest of his life.
image: http://www.acidfreegallery.com/the-three-little-pigs-by-jerrod-maruyama/
Ms. Smith 
Thank you, very much for this post. I love the picture you used for the three little pigs above! Thank you for sharing your story of working with these kids, as well. Your story is important to those that need strategies for helping young English language learners with story comprehension! How do you think this story can apply to others when examining how we are going to honor student potential for roles in greater society? What unique challenges do you feel these children you’ve been working with face when it comes to this goal?
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I think the major point I wanted to make with the example of the Three Little Pigs, is how the story was so memorable and easily memorized by the student, and memorizing the story is all well and good but the student didn’t understand the story. This made me think about situations that were similar to each other that this student would face in the classroom and in social settings; situations that could almost be scripted but not follow word for word. This student will end up in situations that relate but differ on context and people. My hope is that the student will take the skills I showed him in actually reading the story and apply that to social situations ensuring his social growth and maturation in a new world.
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That really is a good skill, to make inferences and connections between pictures/other clues when the conventional way of solving the problem (in this case, reading words) proves difficult. I think that’s a good demonstration of H5 because it’s important to think about the big picture in mind when we educate kids: which skills will we want them to use in society in the future?
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