Last week was the Voces Digital online Spring Conference, and there were many great presentations delivered. One session in particular which I attended touched on many points about which I had written in my last blog post regarding literacy in the world language classroom - the presentation was "Teach Reading? Try This!" by Margarita Perez Garcia, who has written multiple novellas in Spanish (see video below).
Although much of what Margarita presents surrounds low-prep pre-reading and post-reading activities which teachers can implement in their classrooms, she begins by addressing the need for level-appropriate readers, especially elementary/basic readings. In the video, around the 3:21 mark, Margarita discusses that reading unfamiliar and unseen texts can be very hard for students, especially those with lower reading skills. Most importantly, reading can serve as a great divide in a classroom between those with stronger reading/faster processing skills and those who are slower processors/struggle with reading (I had never ever considered this before as an equity issue!). Margarita's focus in the presentation then addresses how we teachers can help students improve their L2 reading skills.
Take some time to watch the entire video (she has a lot of good ideas!), and consider getting some of her Spanish novellas!
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