Reading Strategies To Support Home-To-School Connections Used By Teachers Of English Language Learners

This contains the findings and interpretations of the participant's responses and includes recommendations for organizations and suggestions for future research. The research problem is the lack of resources and approaches identified by teachers to support the home-to-school connection regarding reading strategies of ELLs in kindergarten through third grade. The purpose of this study was to examine reading strategies, approaches, and resources used by teachers in K-3 with ELLs. The goal was to describe and explain the teacher's perspective regarding the reading strategies used in the classroom and the parental involvement in regard to their child's reading development. The researcher chose a particularistic case study to examine teachers' reading strategies, resources, and approaches used with ELLs to support the home-to-school connection. The main source of data collection was twenty-two face-to-face interviews. The objectivity of the information gathered was reflective of the participants' strategies to gain caregiver support to the population of ELL K-3 students in the district. The findings may be generalizable, but limited because of the unique population involved in the study. The qualitative method is appropriate for this study because the researcher relied on the views of the participants to gather in-depth narrative descriptive accounts of the phenomenon (Merriam, 2009). This method entails asking open-ended questions that provide a deeper insight of the participants' perceptions. Qualitative researchers seek to understand the meaning people give to their experiences and how they create a This particularistic qualitative case study design examined reading strategies, approaches, and resources teachers of ELL (English Language Learner) students in kindergarten through third grade use to support reading development and promote the home to school connection regarding literacy proficiency. The purpose of this study was to examine strategies, resources, and approaches used to support home-to-school partnerships focused on reading development of K-3 ELLs in the X Public School District. Data analysis resulted in six emergent themes consisting of 22 teacher interviews. The first finding in this study that was revealed through teacher interviews identified guided reading, visual aides, reader's theater, and modeling/oral reading fluency as strategies that contribute to ELLs reading proficiency. In the second finding, teachers identified inviting parents to volunteer in the classroom, sending home a reading log that helps track the students' reading at home, and inviting parent participation in extracurricular activities as approaches to encourage partnerships regarding reading development of ELLs. The results of this study provided recommendations for educational leaders to provide teachers specific professional development to encourage parent participation to focus on increasing students' reading development that is tailored to the students' and caregivers' language needs. For future research, it is recommended that the study be replicated using different school districts to determine if similar findings were consistent across different districts.