English language learners, those students learning the English language on top of their native, non-English dialect, can often seem to get the short end of the stick in classrooms.
For one thing, these students are beginning English instruction at a disadvantage compared to those who speak English at home, because they don’t have a familiar grounding in it. Additionally, the more proficient they are already in their native language, the more difficult it might be to pick up tricky aspects of the English language – essentially, they might have to “un-learn” things that are correct in one language to develop a better grasp of English.
There are advantages as well, but it can be said that for the students and their teachers alike, English language learners (ELL, EAL/D, ESL students) can present a unique challenge.
CARS & STARS Online is a unique digital reading comprehension system that works on any modern device and meets students at their own level of understanding, via the repeated application of research-derived reading strategies across the entire program. CARS & STARS Online is designed to be able to help improve the reading comprehension ability of every student, and contains several useful features as standard that can be particularly helpful to English language learners.
For a start, CARS & STARS Online breaks reading instruction into discrete but interlocking strategies. These core strategies underpin the entirety of the program, and can be especially useful for ELLs because their reading proficiency can often be uneven – strong in one area but weak in another. By drilling into individual strategies like this, students who excel at one area but struggle in another can receive targeted and helpful instruction – and these issues can be picked up early, before they become obvious problems later on.
The Read Aloud feature, present across every level as standard, allows students to choose to hear a passage read aloud to them instead of or at the same time as they read it themselves. This is of considerable benefit to many students, particularly in terms of imparting correct pronunciation. Students are also able to vary the size of text in stories for increased readability.
CARS & STARS Online allows for peer support, where students working at the same comprehension level can learn together and get help from peers. This can also be helpful because it shows ELLs that they are not alone, but rather progressing through the program in the same way as everybody else. This is true across levels, due to CARS & STARS Online’s recurring structure, where students at higher levels will be working on the same strategies as well. Teachers can assign “buddies” of the same or higher levels, knowing that students will be dealing with the same strategies and so able to help.
CARS & STARS Online’s unique record keeping and instantly updated reports allow a degree of teacher oversight that is unprecedented in reading comprehension instruction, allowing a teacher to monitor not just the student’s current work but their progress across exercises, levels and even years.
For STARS, the in-depth Lesson Plans take teachers through each of the lessons in detail and include correct answers as well as teacher tips. Each STARS Lesson Plan also includes a recurring ELL Support feature that highlights useful tips for engaging with English Language Learners to broaden and enhance the specific instruction being given in that lesson. This feature focuses on English concepts that may present reading challenges to ELLs. Teachers may use this feature to help students understand confusing words or unclear usage.
If additional instruction is required, the new FOCUS Reading module is specifically designed to provide both reinforcement in the key reading strategies for on-level readers, and targeted intervention for struggling readers and English language learners. This reading-strategy series provides practice for students based on the same strategies appearing in CARS & STARS but focusing on only one strategy at a time.
ELL students, like every reader, are able to take advantage and benefit from the unique features of CARS & STARS Online, and so are their teachers.
If you are interested in learning more about the CARS & STARS Online subscriptions and how they can help children to achieve better results, then sign up for a free trial to be an integral part of your child’s reading success.
