Abstract

The book addresses upper elementary English language learners who have a fairly good knowledge of spoken and written English, have demonstrated knowledge of phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding and word recognition, yet are struggling with academic English literacy. Throughout the book, the authors continuously argue that planning and delivering instruction to these students must be based on the ELL’s existing competencies, prior knowledge and experiences. Classroom curriculum and instruction must provide opportunities for helping ELL learners to build and extend skills, knowledge and processes. And, the highly complex process of language learning and literacy development calls for multifaceted instructional approaches. The book is divided into eight chapters providing specific information on the diversity of ELLs and providing examples, models and strategies to move them beyond the transition in English reading and writing.

Angela Carrasquillo is a professor at Fordham University Graduate School of Education where she is the coordinator of the TESOL Program. She is nationally known in the areas of second language and bilingual education and has published extensively in these fields. She is the author (with Vivian Rodríguez ) of Language Minority Students in the Mainstream Classroom (Multilingual Matters, 2002).

Stephen B. Kucer is an associate professor of language and literacy education in the Graduate School of Education at Fordham University Lincoln Center. He is the author of Dimensions of Literacy (Erlbaum) and co-author of Curricular Conversations (Stenhouse).

Ruth Abrams works for the New York City Department of Education as a teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages. She is also on the adjunct faculty of Fordham University Graduate School of Education where she teaches courses in literacy and TESOL.

This is a valuable book for anyone serving intermediate ELL students in upper elementary or high school. Because the authors revisit classic works on the topic, the book is especially important for those teachers who are new to the entire issue of serving ELL students.

The book offers preservice and current teachers of upper elementary ELLs many important practical tools for improving their instructional strategies. And by clarifying the problem of conflating conversational proficiency in English with students’ academic literacy proficiency, in easily accessible text, it challenges potentially discriminatory (mis)evaluations of these students – a significant contribution indeed.

This book is useful for content teachers who want to become more knowledgeable about how best to serve and support ELLs in the classroom setting. The information is an initial but necessary step towards designing and delivering appropriate instruction for ELLs in the content areas, and it provides mainstream teachers with a basic understanding of the complexities of supporting ELLs in the classroom.

This book is remarkable in the amount and depth of content covered in 158 pages. It would be an ideal choice for a professional reading group.