Jul 05 2009 08:59 am
Posted by ekowalsk under Uncategorized
Fourth Grade Slump
Wanda B. Hedrick, Janis M. Harmon, and Karen D. Wood address the “fourth grade slump” in the article “From Trade Books to Textbooks: Helping Bilingual Students Make the Transition.” This slump is often seen when students must transition to nonfiction texts from the primarily fiction texts they read in the earlier grades.
The authors discussed ways to help students with this transition, particularly the TAB (Talking About Books) Book club. In this method, students read, write, and talk about informational texts in small groups to hold a content area book club. First, they discuss ideas and prior knowledge, then they read the text and gather information. The final step is for students to write about their interpretations (individiually and collaboratively) and extend and share their ideas with others.
The authors worked with students to help them discuss and examine the different features of fiction, nonfiction, and textbooks and how readers read these texts. They also worked with internal text structure such as cause and effect. ELL students especially benefit from this focus on text structure as they build content area conceptual understandings.
What other ways do you know of or use to combat this fourth grade slump as students transition from fiction tradebooks to nonfiction texts?
Rachel on 13 Jul 2009 at 2:10 pm #
I have seen this slump in action and it is quite saddening. Textbooks written at a fourth grade level are not for all fourth graders, just as fiction books written at a fourth grade level are not appropriate for all fourth graders. I love the idea of trade-books based in the content area. The only problem is that this requires a great deal of trade-books and could be quite costly. Another way was to use the textbook as part of a read-aloud or even shared reading. That way the teacher can scaffold the reading portion, but the content can be standard for all students.
mdurfee on 17 Jul 2009 at 8:04 am #
Weaknesses in ELLs academic language often show up around third or fourth grade. Some of the reasons for this have roots in second language development. It takes two to three years for students to develop Basic Conversational Skills (BICS), but five years to seven years (or more) for students to develop Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). Students who are getting along fine in daily tasks can suddenly have the “bottom” drop out when the academic language becomes more difficult. I agree that teachers need to scaffold learning for many students during this time.
ekowalsk on 19 Jul 2009 at 12:32 pm #
Working with ELL students does present a special challenge at this age. Do you have any suggestions for how teachers can support their learning from your experience?