Basal Reading Program Analysis

Classrooms will always be composed of students with different needs. For example, in every class there are going to be students with different reading levels, it doesn’t matter if there are in the same class. Basal reading programs are extremely problematic not only for ELL’s, but to the class as a whole. The reason that basal reading programs are problematic to ELL students is because they don’t meet their needs. Every student gets the same passage, passages that are meant to teach them how to read. But these passages are actually doing a poor job of helping them master the skill, the transition from learning to read and reading to learn is not that great because the programs are not helping the students build a vast vocabulary. Furthermore, some teachers rely on these program as their sole teaching method, hindering the students’ development. For ELL students to learn the skill they need to be able to understand the vocabulary that the passages include. But most of the time, ELL students don’t have that vocabulary so it’s difficult for them to comprehend the stories. Also, because there are no modifications, it’s more than likely that students are falling behind and all of that sun snowballs from there.

This will cause confusion when they are trying to make inferences of what tone the author is using or when an author is trying to make a sarcastic remark. In my opinion, I also think that students might struggle to make connections to what they are reading. The majority of the time, if not all the time, these programs don’t provide passages that are adapted to fit ELL students’ needs. Students won’t comprehend what the passages are trying to convey because more than likely they haven’t experienced or known about the situations happening in the