Home » Our Youngest English Language Learners and the the Need for an Inclusive Early Reading Program

Our Youngest English Language Learners and
the Need for an Inclusive Reading Program

Although the majority of citizens in countries around the world have many different official languages within their borders, Canada and the United States have remained bilingual. However, increasing numbers of children in these parts of North America come from homes in which English is not the primary language spoken. In fact, projections suggest that in the United States, “english language learners (ELLs) will comprise over 40 percent of elementary and secondary students by 2030.”

The methodology behind the Ooka Island Adventure was carefully developed so that it would benefit all students learning to read in English – not just those with an English speaking background. Founder and Reading Researcher, Dr. Kay MacPhee, created the Ooka Island Adventure to start at a point that assumes the student is a non-reader. The Adventure begins with acquiring the English sounds and language, making it a natural introduction for an ELL child with minimal English comprehension. As the child progresses through the Adventure, the reading program adapts to their skill level, ensuring mastery and readiness to move forward in each area of phonemic, phonetic, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension development.

English Language Learners reading program

The following bullets are key components included in the Ooka Island Adventure that not only remove barriers for ELLs and create a more inclusive program for the classroom, but enables an ELL student to take off into reading English fluently and well.

English language learners must become very familiar with the sounds of English to be able to recognize the letters and immediately recall the corresponding sounds, and to be able to segment words into sounds, and blend sounds into words. This guided process in Ooka Island prepares the child to effortlessly decode when reading.
The Ooka Reading Program introduces the 44 sounds of English in a carefully designed hierarchy, starting with the sounds that are the easiest to hear and blend together. This is ideal for children with beginning English skills, particularly as the child works at the individual sound level before having to put the sounds together.
Due to the order in which the sounds of English are presented in Ooka Island, children are well prepared to work with the sounds that are more difficult to hear by the time they reach them in the program.
To ensure that a particular skill is truly mastered, the child is taken through the activities at each level three times, before moving on to the next level. If necessary, the child is directed to additional activities that will bring that particular skill to mastery. English language learners may require this extra practice to reach the level where the skill is automatic.
Though a child with beginning English skills may not understand the directions for the various activities, once they have been explained for the early levels of the program, the child should be able to do the remaining levels with little if any further explanation.
The books included in the program use natural language, familiar situations, recurring characters, and a story line right from the beginning.
The stories are read to the children as the words in the e-book are highlighted, giving them exposure to fluent English as they follow the print on the page. A narrator also provides a brief introduction to each story and some discussion of the events as the story is read.
The children may also use the “Read” feature to enter the Ooka Island program so that they can read the stories until they become fluent in using the every day language.