The two books above are both used in our third grade study of Australia. Each has features that are both supportive and challenging for students acquiring English.
Dingoes at Dinnertime is a novel in the Magic Tree House series. Many students are already familiar with the characters in this series and the premise of the stories. The story involves unrealistic events in which children travel through time and space in a tree house. Their adventures bring them to new knowledge about specific subjects. In this particular story, the children travel to Australia and learn about the people, culture, and animals of the country. As they learn facts, the vocabulary and new knowledge are separated in the text. For ELL students, that separation is helpful to draw attention to important information. The engaging characters and plot are also helpful for ELL students. However, the story is a chapter book, which must be read in sequential order. Completing the entire book can become an overwhelming task for a student still acquiring English. In addition, there are sketches on numerous pages, but overall, it is a text-heavy novel. Therefore, there may not be enough visual aids to help lighten the linguistic load.
The non-fiction text, Taking Your Camera to Australia, has a different format than a fictional novel. This book is divided into sections that can be read in any order. This would be helpful for ELLs because they can focus on reading small sections relevant to the information they need, but not have to complete the entire book. The photographs are colorful and all provide captions to explain what is being portrayed. These features would also be helpful for ELL students. Additionally, at the end of the book, there is a section titled "Quick Facts". It has introductory facts (such as monetary unit, language, flag, population, capital city) along with pictures. The language in this section is reduced and it is easy to find facts. This section would be a great place to start with ELL students to introduce them to the rest of the content in the book. One challenge of this non-fiction text may be the reading level. This book is supposed to be written at a third grade level, however, it is filled with vocabulary and information that would be challenging for even native-English speaking children. The information in this book would need additional scaffolding in order to be meaningful for many ELLs.
References
Osborne, M.P. (2000). Dingoes at dinnertime. New York, NY: Random House.
Park, T. (2000). Taking your camera to Australia. Austin, TX: Steck-Vaughn.
Hi Carrie,
ReplyDeleteI’ve used the Magic Tree House series with some of my tutoring students, and I love to see how engaged the students are with the subject matter. Pairing one of these fiction books with a non-fiction text would be a wonderful way to supplement their reading in a meaningful way.
You did a very thoughtful job of examining the potential pitfalls of both fiction and nonfiction texts for ELL students. I agree that beginning with a lighter nonfiction text would give your students better background knowledge as they tackled a chapter book. You’re absolutely right that content-specific vocabulary can be daunting for all students—most especially ELLs.
I’ve rarely gotten to pair fiction and nonfiction texts with my secondary Social Studies students, but I think it is a wonderful way to immerse students in subject matter and give them a new lens for better perspective. I love to hear that this happens much more often at the elementary level. How nice to get to become an expert on a subject in nonfiction and then transfer expository information into more enjoyable fiction reading!
Carrie,
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job examining both the fiction and the nonfiction texts. I've never read the Magic Treehouse books, but they sound very similar to the Magic School bus that also takes difficult topics and makes them fun and engaging. When trying to teach my students about scientific topics, I love using the books that have engaging characters!