Support Reading Comprehension for MLLs – One Strategy to Use Today

Tips for Creating Access to Reading in the Mainstream Content Classroom

Sometimes called “juicy” sentences (which weirds me out a little if I’m being honest although I totally get it), mentor sentences are a great way to build reading confidence and grit with any subject matter. Often, we don’t realize how linguistically complex the texts we choose for our students are. Not that our students are incapable of understanding them, but that it can feel like wading through the underbrush of a dense forest. We can use the mentor sentence to provide students with the tools to cut through the complex language and structure by practicing with a bite-sized piece of that text. That’s the mentor sentence!

Here’s How You Prep:

1. Preview a text that you plan to use in your instruction. It could be a nonfiction article, a chapter from your novel, a TedTalk, a page from your textbook, or even a word problem.
2. Choose a sentence that you want to unpack with students.
   • Something with multiple pieces of information or layers of meaning
   • Includes Tier 2 vocabulary
   • Makes use of language devices ( idioms, figurative language, etc.)
   • Requires synthesis
   • Relevance to the text as a whole or the learning objective
3. Unpack it yourself!
   • What natural sections exist in this sentence?
   • What is the purpose of each section?
   • What actions are described?
   • What is the kernel (most basic subject/ verb ), and what is extra detail?
   • What words might kids not know? What words do I want to MAKE SURE they know?
   • Are there idioms or other figurative language that students have to infer?
4. Create a list of guiding questions to use with students as they dig in!
5. To add extra support for lower level MLLs, I make a small list of questions – yes/no, multiple choice, etc. or include picture word banks to help give them extra context and language support. I print 4 to a page and pass them out casually as I am directing students to write the sentence down.

Here’s How You Use It:

1. Project a slide that includes the sentence, plus directions and a couple of thinking frames.
   • I like to see what students notice on their own first, so I keep it open ended. While giving thinking/ writing time, I’ll pop around to students who I know might need a little boost and ask one of my guiding questions to help them notice something. I always have students copy the sentence word for word into their notebooks.
2. Engage in a partner discussion, then whole class discussion.
   • break apart the sentence into sections
   • look up unfamiliar vocab
   • support and validate students’ noticings! (this is the most important!)
   • ask your guiding questions if needed!
3. Model your thinking and annotate the sentence with student comments. Make sure students also annotate in their notebooks.
4. Make sure to highlight the most essential piece of the sentence and how you found it. Reinforce that this is a strategy students can use when reading the rest of the text by themselves.

Here’s an example:

The sentence above is from a History.com article on the Underground Railroad. The sentence is packed with information, is a complex sentence, and has some solid Tier 2 vocabulary like railroad,activist, and fugitive. It also has a tricky word: content. Depending on how it is used in a sentence, it is pronounced differently, with a significantly different meaning. Finally, the idea of the Railroad itself is figurative language. MLLs may understand the concept, but not that it wasn’t an actual above groundrailroad with trains.

This routine might take a little bit of time at first – many kiddos are reluctant to write down their own thoughts, and the whole group discussion can be slow – with consistent practice and validation this activity quickly becomes second nature.

Why It Works:

Its often easy to think that you could just provide MLLs with an alternate text – something with simpler structure, or designed for a lower lexile. In most cases, this is actually detrimental to the MLLs in our content classroom. It sends the message that they are undeserving of rich, rigorous, grade- appropriate texts. It can also be embarrassing, discouraging, and isolating- all of their native English speaking peers get to read a different text. Even if it shares the same information, this modification isn’t equity.

Instead, build in structures and teaching strategies that allow your MLs to access the same text as their peers. The best part is that these strategies also support every other learner in your class -regardless of their reading level.

Have you used this strategy in your classroom? How did it go? Let me know in the comments!