Foreword by Robert Marzano

I began this blogging journey by giving the book a structural overview. I skimmed the structure of the book: the images on the front and back cover, the text description in the back, the dedications and the contents table, and tabbed the different chapters. I made it a point to get myself acquainted with the text structure before I began my reading in order to roadmap what lay ahead. I find that doing this helps me prepare and polish my purpose for reading, which ultimately helps my reading comprehension.

My analysis begins with the Foreword written by Robert J. Marzano. Here Marzano lays out the 'So What' factor of why this book is relevant. Marzano describes the reality that many of our U.S. students entering secondary education are not prepared to meet the academic expectations. Many of these students lack the background knowledge, or as Gee would describe, lack fluency in a Secondary Discourse, which ultimately affects their ability to write reports, summaries and meet grade level expectations.

Many of these secondary students have limited English proficiency which further hinders their academic performance. Here we have a list of students that are identified in this book as English Language Learners and Struggling Readers:

English Language Learners (ELL’s) are students who began school speaking another language, learned to speak and understand English but can’t read and write it well.

Different types of English Language Learners: 

1. Students that arrived students in the U.S. recently but were well prepared in the schools of their homelands. These students are often are successful in school, but struggle in learning the language fast enough to meet testing standards  which is an unrealistic standard considering language acquisition takes about six (6) years and creates  assessment bias.  
2. Students that arrive with limited academic knowledge and literacy in their native tongue. These students have to learn to read and write in English as well as develop content-area knowledge in it.
3. Students that are long-term English learners, have been in the U.S. for some time and have well developed conversational skills but lack academic English.

Standard English Learner’s are struggling student readers that entered school speaking a nonstandard variety of English; these students can speak the language with little trouble but have a difficult time with academic reading and writing. 

Marzano point out that in the text the Freeman’s discuss what each type of student needs in order to read and write effectively in the different content areas. Marzano further discusses that in the text the Freemans make a clear distinction between conversational language and academic language and why it is important to understand the difference in order for these students to succeed scholastically.

This book breaks down academic language into different levels of organization:

• Text level;
• paragraph;
• sentence;
• and word.

The purpose of this book is to explain to teachers how to guide students towards meeting academic standards of their grade level by successfully writing complex sentences and organized paragraphs. 

Marzano further states that in the text the Freemans provide specific suggestions for increasing academic vocabulary to help students struggling with reading and writing through a combination of reading and learning strategies as well as teaching strategies of key content area vocabulary. Here the Freemans provide classroom examples of instructional activities to motivate and engage students in content area reading and writing. Finally, Marzano states that the Freemans advocate organizing curriculum around thematic units that focus on teaching both language and content in the text which is aimed at to prepare secondary teachers with help to adequately support these students academic needs.