Learning through Books, Media and Technology

ARTICLES THIS ISSUE:

1996 Administrative Leadership Award for Library Media Services

1996 President's Award Winner

1996 Technology Award

Editorial: Learning Comes in Many Languages

From Cave Writing to Computers

A Theme's the Thing

Primary Languages, Primary sources on the Internet

Update on a Model Library Media Program

Limited? There Are No Limits

A Bilingual Student Population

Cooking Their Way to Literacy

Good Ideas! Home Page

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Limited? There Are No Limits

Riley elementary School

As part of a lesson on pre-research skills, Riley students listen for their keywords while watching a video about reptiles.

Riley Elementary in Lakewood is a Chapter I school, over half of whose students are limited English proficient. As a standard element in her collaborative planning with teachers, Sandra Steen, library media teacher, considers the unique needs of these English learners and adapts her presentations so they will be successful. How?

Sandra speaks Spanish and uses it when working with students in small groups as follow-up to whole-class instruction, which is in English. "I'm not really that fluent," she said, "but you can do a lot with even limited language." Sandra feels her efforts bring out the kids' own language and their pride in what they know.

Sandra is creative in designing strategies to make content more comprehensible to English learners. In a recent unit on animals, she used captioned videos and gave students cards with keywords that might be seen in the captions. When students recognized the keywords on the video screen, they were excited to hold up their matching cards. This reinforced both the language and the concept of subjects as keywords for locating information.

A new unit on careers adds even more depth and allows Sandra to get much more involved with the community. It gives English learners a chance to share information about people and places in their lives and to use adults from their community as role models. Students read and write their reports in Spanish and find materials more easily because they have access to Dewey subjects in Spanish.

Sandra also uses poetry extensively. After she recalls poems to the students in Spanish and English, students write their own poems-many in Spanish-using the various elements of poetry. In the library at Riley, every child succeeds-no matter what the language.

• Riley Elementary School (Grades K-5; enrollment 904)
  3319 Sandwood Street, Lakewood 90712; (310) 426-2961
  Christine Lungren-Maddalone, Principal
  Sandra Steen, Library Media Teacher
  Long Beach Unified School District