Improving Early Literacy Practices for Young English Language Learners

Abstract

This capstone project examined early literacy practices for young English Language Learners (ELLs). At Red Wolves Elementary, the young ELL population consist of more than half of the student population. The current issue they are facing is being one to two years behind on their reading level. This paper presents research and qualitative case studies on the challenges and effective research based methods to improve the early literacy for young struggling ELLs. A solution to the problem was the creation a professional development that aims to support early childhood teachers, English as a new language and bilingual teachers to improve the early literacy practices for young ELLs in the areas of vocabulary, phonics, comprehension and learning assessments. The professional development will help teachers understand different ways ELLs learn and ways to incorporate their background and cultural knowledge into their literacy practices. The expected outcome from this research and professional development is having teachers differentiate their literacy practices and lesson planning to support learning for ELLs in vocabulary, phonics, comprehension and learning assessments while striving for literacy gains.