Skip to main content

ELL grad students support multilingual families with 'Ready to Read, Indeed' night at J.E. Moss Elementary School

Kim Chaudoin | 615.966.6494 | 

JE Moss_large

Connecting families with literacy and equipping them with tools to support learning is a passion of a group of Lipscomb English Language Learner program graduate students.

JE Moss_1On Tuesday, April 19, a group of 48 graduate students from Lipscomb University’s College of Education hosted a family literacy night at J.E. Moss Elementary School in Antioch. The event, “Ready to Read, Indeed,” offered families an opportunity to enhance their reading skills at six literacy centers. The event was offered in English, Spanish, and Arabic. The J.E. Moss Elementary School student body is comprised of nearly 900 students, who speak more than 21 languages. Approximately 450 families attended the event.

“We need to continue to find authentic ways to partner with families and make real connections with literacy,” said Jeanne Fain, lead faculty for Lipscomb’s English Language Learner program and associate professor of education. “We want our families to connect to texts and reading in meaningful literacy centers. We desire that these invitations will support parents as they support their children as readers and writers. This event shows families how to make these connections JE Moss_2and equips them to extend these connections into their homes. The linguistic support allows all families participation as they support their children as learners.”

Each center was facilitated by Lipscomb graduate education students and J.E. Moss teachers. The centers were designed for families to work together in them.

The literacy six centers activities included: listening to read-aloud books and playing sight-word bingo. Each family took home a bingo game; learning how to ask open-ended questions, with each family taking home a bookmark on how to ask open-ended questions; making a book together; reading aloud and learning about the beginning, middle and end of a book; making a “heart map” to help them think about what to write in books and correspondence; and reading books online.

JE Moss_3“The Ready to Read, Indeed event was part of our graduate students’ field experience connected to their ELL courses,” said Fain. “It gave our students the opportunity to interactively engage with families and for some of our students who speak Spanish to use their linguistic skills to make connections with families who speak Spanish.”

Fain said that a goal of the College of Education is to inspire and equip students to make an impact on the community around them.

“This experience was designed for the students to give back to community and simultaneously learn from the supportive J.E. Moss Community,” said Fain. “Real partnerships are an important part of making a difference for creating lifelong readers and writers. This event seeks to build partnerships in the community as we seek to build upon the literate strengths of the community. My goal for this event is for educators to learn to actively engage families in literacy and honor their voices in school.” 

JE Moss_4At the end of the event, families selected four books to take home that are “the beginning of home libraries for many of our families,” said Fain. These books are made possible through a Read Indeed grant.

“The Ready to Read program is so vital to our J. E. Moss community because the access to books during the summer is an integral part of combating ‘summer loss’ in our students, especially our English Language learners,” said C. Anthony Febles, executive principal of J.E. Moss Elementary School. “Language acquisition is very constant throughout the 10 months of school, but when the students return to their homes during the summer, the limited use of English in the home causes this English acquisition to regress in varying degrees.”

JE Moss_6“Research has shown that independent reading throughout the summer, any type of reading, reduces or completely eliminates this regression,” he continued. “Events like our Literacy Night not only puts books into the hands of students, but also helps parents understand how to help their children during the summer through strategies taught to them by the Moss faculty and Lipscomb partners.

The Ready to Read, Indeed event at J.E. Moss is an outgrowth of Tennessee’s new Ready to Read initiative. Under Ready to Read, focused on children from infancy to second grade, the Tennessee Department of Education is partnering with other state agencies to ensure that children who enter kindergarten in Tennessee are already primed to learn to read.

JE Moss_7The goal of Ready to Read is to help educators prepare students in grades 3 and higher for overhauled state exams that will require stronger reading skills than ever. Candice McQueen, Tennessee education commissioner and former dean of Lipscomb’s College of Education, developed Ready to Read in a response to the state’s low-performance in reading proficiency in schools. In 2015, just 48.4 percent of Tennessee students in grades 3-8 passed the state’s proficiency bar in reading, down from a peak of 50.5 percent in 2013.

Lipscomb’s Master of Education in English Language Learning is a unique program that leads to a master's degree in English as a Second Language. The program examines the theory and practice of English language instruction for non-native speakers with a particular focus on the importance of culture and environment for this fast-growing population. Candidates may also choose to add the license in ESL without engaging in the full master's program. The College of Education also offers an Education Specialist degree in English Language Learning, as well as and English Language Learning endorsement.

—Photos by Janel Shoun-Smith