Enriching English Instruction

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Recommended: English is an important subject to be learned

Despite the rapidly shrinking budgets for arts programs and the growing de-emphasization of English as a relevant field of study, the lessons learned and taught in English classrooms still forms the foundation of learning throughout a student’s academic career. For most American students the English language will serve as the lens through which they view other subjects, and reading comprehension will be the tool that lets them learn from those subjects. Without an adequate foundation in such a core subject, students are simply thrown into the water and “even if they manage to swim, we cannot reasonably expect them to enjoy being in the water” (Brown & Broemmel, 2011). Effective instruction in English and Language Arts, then, should be centered around giving students the tools to become better readers and better learners.

This idea is expressed best through scaffolded instruction. Instructional scaffolding provides students with a broad-base of support from which to launch their learning. Scaffolding is included in the most basic lesson plans, where teachers are encouraged to provide checklists and supplemental materials for their students to periodically assess their progress through a unit. In Deep Scaffolding: Enhancing the Reading Experiences of English Language Learners, Clara Brown and Amy Broemmel argue that those traditional scaffolding methods are insufficient for the needs of students. They propose a system of deep scaffolding, where Teachers must both increase the amount of scaffolding support offered to students and keenly focus on the meaningfulness of that scaffolding. Broemmel and Brown’s deep scaffolding focuses on recognizing the potential of students as learners and provides adequate depth of instruction for st...

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...le outside activities. “Create” provides a space for students to use richer media technologies than available in a classroom to complete assignments.

Works Cited

Brown, C. L., & Broemmel, A. D. (2011). Deep scaffolding: Enhancing the reading experiences of English language learners. New England Reading Association Journal, 46(2), 34-39.

Callahan, M., & King, J. M. (2011). Classroom Remix: Patterns of Pedagogy in a Techno-Literacies Poetry Unit. Journal Of Adolescent & Adult Literacy,55(2), 134-144. doi:10.1002/JAAL.00016

Santos, A. E. (2011). Blogs As A Learning Space: Creating Text Of Talks.Contemporary Issues In Education Research, 4(6), 15-19.

Savino, J. (2011). The Shakespeare in All of Us: A Monumental, Multitudinous, Premeditated Approach to Vocabulary Instruction. Journal Of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(6), 445-453. doi:10.1598/JAAL.54.6.6

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