This past May, I was fortunate enough to be one of 13 students studying urban education at MSU to be selected to participate in a study tour in London, England. London's Specialist Schools and Academy Trust program placed us in schools all over the city, provided us with lectures, guest speakers, and resources they thought would be valuable to future teachers. The Dockside Reading Project was one of these resources. The Dockside project is a series of short graphic books aimed at older students,living in the inner city, who are also English language learners. The project was created to encourage children who were learning English as a second language to read books at their own reading level without becoming self conscious or feeling uncomfortable. The books feature older looking characters of various cultural backgrounds in an urban setting. The illustrations in the books are similar to that of a comic book or graphic novel, and the books themselves are actually similar in size to comics, as well.
Each page features only one line of text, many words are repeated and underlined throughout the text, and in the front of each book there is a glossary for students.
Overall, I really loved the idea, and came away from the experience with four new resources for my students. About a month after coming home from London, I started work in a camp with students with developmental disabilities. Many of our students, up to middle school, were still in the process of mastering reading and reading comprehension, and it did not take long for me to think about the Dockside books and whether or not they would be beneficial to helping my students learn to read.
I am curious to see if anyone has come across a similar reading tool, or whether or not they think this would be valuable to their own classrooms. As a future educator pursuing both special education as well as TESOL, I feel that these could be extremely beneficial to my future students.
Here is an online resource from SSAT about the project!
https://www.ssatrust.org.uk/teachingandlearning/literacy/Pages/Dockside.aspx
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