Reading Horizons Review: Dr. Molly O'Shea

Many ELL students are saying that they are learning more about their own language and its functions, things that they had never realized before, thanks to Reading Horizons!  Thanks to their insights, we often use a compare-contrast model where appropriate to further engage and reinforce a point especially for students who are literate in their mother language.  

Reading Horizons provides another benefit for so many of our refugee students—how to discover patterns and see relationships.  This essential skill is so often lost to our students who have not had educational opportunities.  For example, the organizational skill of sorting items such as pencils go into the pencil basket while scissors have another location, folders are filed by facing the reader, chairs are stacked in a certain pattern—these things may sound so simple to do for so many, but for a significant number of our newcomers identifying, grouping, sorting, arranging patterns, classifying and interpreting relationships are not part of their learning experiences which would have particularly occurred in a school setting. I anticipate that as we continue to engage our ELL students with Reading Horizons, there will be more "ah ha's" as to the explicit and subtle benefits underpinning the program.

Grade Level: Secondary