The Educational Resource Center, located in Campion Hall, is the best place on campus to locate books to share with your English Language Learners (ELLs). The ERC provides a rich collection of fiction and nonfiction English, bilingual, and World Language children's books including many award-winning titles. Enriching the collection are many multicultural titles.
Search the BC Libraries Catalog for materials.
The Academic Language in Read Alouds Project at Boston College: Academic Language in Early Childhood and Elementary Classrooms:
"Early Childhood and Elementary Education students in licensure programs conduct Read Aloud lessons in their pre-practicum site weekly. Boston College students are paired with an ELL in their classroom and get to know this child in a one-on-one situation. Through read alouds of fiction and informational texts, students learn to evaluate the linguistic demand of a lesson, and to embed teaching of vocabulary, language structure, and reading comprehension strategies." More on how the Read Aloud Project connects to linguistically responsive teaching...
The Academic Language in Read Alouds Project is created based on the following Boston College Teacher Education themes:
Theme 1: Advancing Equity and Justice
We conceptualize teaching as an activity with political dimensions. We acknowledge that there are significant historical and ongoing disparities in the educational and social opportunities, resources, achievements, and outcomes between historically marginalized students and their more privileged counterparts. We see the purpose of teaching as enhancing the learning and life chances of the diverse student population by working with others to challenge the inequities of school and society. Our programs require teacher candidates to recognize and challenge inequities in educational opportunities and work with others to advance equity and a more just society. A major challenge for us as teacher educators is to understand both the potential and the limitations of our programs even as we acknowledge that teachers alone cannot eradicate societal and school inequities but they can work with others in larger social movements to do so.
Theme 2: Promoting Knowledge Co-construction
We believe that teachers and learners are active agents in their own learning who draw on prior knowledge and their cultural, linguistic and experiential resources to co-construct knowledge as they interact with texts, media, materials, technologies, and others. Our programs foster the capacity of teacher candidates to create learning environments that promote knowledge co-construction.
Theme 3: Inquiring into Practice
We conceptualize teaching as a reflective and recursive process of inquiry that occurs within socially, culturally, and historically situated learning environments with the purpose of providing all students with deep and authentic learning. Our programs advance an inquiry stance that positions practitioners in the center of educational transformation
Theme 4: Embracing an Ethic of Care
Teaching is a reciprocal and relational activity that is grounded in respect for the dignity of all individuals. We are committed to cultivating a humanizing vision of teaching that recognizes the whole person, is inspired by an ethic of care and is committed to collective well-being. Our programs promote approaches that encourage all learners to build lives of meaning and purpose.
