Picturing Literacies and Noticing Main Ideas: Teaching ELL and NES Striving Readers to Notice Main Ideas in Nonfiction Texts

Abstract

Framed by a sociocultural understanding of literacy acquisition and learning, this research study investigates methods content area teachers can use to meet the needs of adolescent English language learners and native English speakers who struggle to read texts in school. The interventions were designed to both expand students’ concepts of literacy and of themselves as literate people, and to capitalized on students’ multiliteracies by using visual art to teach students how to notice main ideas in nonfiction texts. Statistical analyses indicate that English language learners made significant gains in reading comprehension. However, analyses of students’ written reflections and of stimulated recall interviews illustrate that, although students practiced literacies in diverse and powerful ways outside of school, they maintained generally low self-concepts and highly schoolish conceptions of literacy.