The Plight of the Upper Grade English Learner: Comprehending, Not Just Decoding! Using Big Picture Strategies to Reveal Key Ideas in Texts

Purpose – The primary purpose of this chapter is to offer classroom teachers, administrators, and program specialists specific “big picture” strategies to support upper grade English learners in comprehending expository content-area texts that offer challenges not present in narrative or story-like texts.Design/methodology/approach – Two separate approaches for helping English learners to identify content topics, text structures, and key ideas that control text selections are described and modeled: the Advance Organizer and PLAN (Predict, Locate, Add, and Note).Findings – When learners engage in specific, step-by-step “big picture” processes to understand text structure, organization, and concepts/vocabulary (not relying simply on decoding, or sounding out words), they attain higher levels of comprehension and retention.Research limitations/implications – “Big picture” strategies are well-documented in research as having advantages for all learners who interact with expository text structures – but are especially effective for English learners who may struggle with unfamiliar text structures and higher levels of academic and technical content-area vocabulary.Practical implications – Specific directions for (and advantages of) implementing two big picture strategies that are adaptable to a wide range of grade levels and content-area topics are presented. Teachers can easily modify the strategies in flexible ways to personalize the use of these strategies for English learners in any content-area context.Originality/value of chapter – With step-by-step directions, templates, and examples of content-area texts to guide them, teachers can easily utilize these strategies with English learners using a whole class, small-group, or one-to-one intervention approach.