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Using Steve Jobs’ Biography to Teach
a Reading Workshop Class to English
Language Learner Students
Dr. Benita Elaine Bell
1

Dr. Benita Bell
 Dr. Bell currently teaches as an adjunct professor for the Psychology
and Counselor Education Departments at Concordia University. Dr.
Bell earned a Doctorate Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from
Loyola University Chicago. Dr. Bell served as Principal of the
Octavio Paz Charter School in Chicago and her school earned an
educational ranking as a “School of Distinction.”
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Contact Information:
Email: benitabell@gmail.com
Email: benita.bell@cuchicago.edu
Cell Phone: (847) 477-4511
http://benita-bell.squarespace.com
Adjunct Professor for the College of Education
Concordia University Chicago
7400 Augusta Street
River Forest, Illinois 60305
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During this Session, You Will Learn:
 Strategies to Teach Vocabulary
 Strategies to Increase Comprehension and Memory
 How to Use Posters to Assess Student Skills
 How to Teach Your Students Summarizing and Analytical Skills
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English Language Learners
Finding interesting and relevant reading material is challenging for all English
teachers when working with ELL students. This workshop will present English
teachers of ELL students an introduction to a novel study unit that both
appeals to secondary students, and helps them to improve critically important
literacy skills.
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Benefits of Reading Biographies
• One of the benefits of reading biographies is that they provide
valuable lessons in life.
• What do students learn from biographies?
• “The priceless lessons of experience. We live in a world built by
their genius and inventiveness. The secrets of success are to be
fond in all of these remarkable lives. If you wish to excel in your
own life, there is no better place to find inspiration than in the
lives of those who have changed our world and changed our lives
for the better.” (Blumenfeld, 2016)
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That being said:
• Who has changed our lives through technology better than Steve Jobs?
• Steve Jobs was a pioneer, inventor, and marketing genius.
• Steve Jobs once said, “ I want to make a dent in the universe.”
• Apple Computer founded by the late Steve Jobs has changed the way we use
technology today.
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Instructional Objectives
• Improve vocabulary through direct instruction, student friendly definitions and
visual representations
• Write an analysis of the biography of Steve Jobs with first, second and third
drafts.
• Draw individual visual representations of vocabulary and characters
• Create posters displaying key concepts from biography using collaborative
learning.
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Instructional Methodology:
 Multiple teaching strategies for all learning styles
 Teacher Modeled Skills & Ideas
 Teacher Guided Practice of Skills
 Gradual Release of Responsibility to Students (Active engagement)
 Individual Practice of Skills by Students
 Daily & Weekly Assessment of Skills
 Reteaching of Skills As Required
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Reading Workshop Key Components Multisensory Vocabulary Instruction
 Think aloud Comprehension Strategies
 Daily Note Taking and Writing Practice
 Oral Reading by Students & Teacher
 Daily Assessment Using Exit Ticket/Short Quiz
 Chapter Written Comprehension Questions
 Posters Demonstrating Understanding of key concepts of biography
 Student’s Final Papers Summarizing and Analyzing Key Ideas of the Book
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Research Questions
• Will the vocabulary of secondary English Language Learner
students improve by reading and studying the biography of a
modern day technology genius?
• Will the motivation of secondary English Language Learn
students improve by reading the biography of Steve Jobs?
• Null Hypothesis: There will be no difference in the
motivation to read with secondary English Language
Learners after reading the biography of Steve Jobs?
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For Students to learn and remember,
They must make BRAIN CONNECTIONS.
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What Helps Students Make
these Connections?
Vocabulary MultisensoryVocabulary Multisensory
InstructionInstruction
By using as many sensesmany senses as you can
to get the most repetitionsmost repetitions
Multisensory Instruction gets the most repetitions at ONE time.
at the same timesame time
in the least amount of timeleast amount of time
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This Information About Multisensory
Instruction is Posted in My Classroom.
See it
HEAR it
SAY it
WRITE it
TOUCH it
MOVE it
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Vocabulary: Effective Strategies for Teaching
Vocabulary to ELL:
 According to Isabel L. Beck, an important researcher and educator in the field
of vocabulary development:
 “A robust approach to vocabulary involves directly explaining the meanings of
words along with thought-provoking, playful, and interactive follow-up” (Beck,
I.L.McKeown, & Kucan (2013, p. 3)
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Robust Vocabulary Instruction
According to Beck, “students need to develop and interest in
and awareness of words in order to adequately build their
vocabulary repertoires. (Beck, 2013, p. 14)
Her advice to teachers is to “make words meanings explicit
and clear. Develop student-friendly explanations for
discussing word meanings.
Get students actively involved with thinking about and using
the meanings right away (Beck, 2013, p. 54).
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Building Background Knowledge
 When students do not have background knowledge, teachers need to help
students to develop this knowledge using instructional interventions:
 Directly teaching important vocabulary
 Model how to develop vocabulary and critical comprehension skills
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Graphic Organizer Used for Building Background
Knowledge:
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During Reading Workshop, I used a
Six-Step Process for Teaching Academic
Vocabulary
1. Provide a description, explanation or example of the new term. (Include a non-
linguistic representation of the term for ESL students)
2. Students will restate the description, explanation or example in their own words.
3. Ask students to construct a picture, symbol or graphic representing the word.
4. Engage students periodically in activities that help them add to their knowledge
of the terms in their vocabulary notebooks.
5. Personally ask students to discuss the terms with one another.
6. Involve students in games that allow them to play with terms.
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Marzano- Strategy #1
• Provide a description, explanation or example of the new term.
– Find or create pictures that explain the term.
– Introduce direct experiences that provide examples of the term.
– Create graphic organizer with class.
• Word Webs: New word is written in the middle circle Characteristic or meaning
is written in outside circles.
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Marzano-Strategy #2
 Ask students to restate the description, explanation or example in their own
words.
 Monitor and correct misunderstandings
 Must be student’s original ideas, not parroting the teacher.
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Marzano-Strategy #3
 Marzano: The third step in the process is crucial—having students represent
their understanding of a new term by drawing a picture, pictograph, or
symbolic representation
 Ask students to construct a picture, symbol, or graphic representing the word.
 Model, model, model
 Draw an example of the term
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Marzano-Strategy #4
 Engage students in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in
their notebooks.
 Highlight prefixes, suffixes, root words that will help them remember the meaning
of the term.
 Identify synonyms and antonyms for the term.
 List related words.
 Translate the term into another language for second language students
 Point out cognates to words in Spanish
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Marzano Strategy #5

Ask students to discuss the terms with one another.
 Think-Pair-Share
 Compare their descriptions of the term
 Describe their pictures to one another
 Identify areas of disagreement or confusion and seek clarification.
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Marzano Strategy #6
 Involve students in games that allow them to play with the terms, such as:
 Pictionary
 Memory
 Jeopardy
 Charades
 Bingo
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A Reading Workshop Student’s Vocabulary Visual Representation

Vocabulary Strategy: Four Corners:
 Enables students to contextualize
 word by
 1. Creating a chart with an illustration of the word
 2. A sentence that includes the vocabulary word
 3. Definition of the vocabulary word
 4. The actual vocabulary word.
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Use a Variety of Visual Activities:
• To emphasize patterns in word families, spelling patterns, prefixes, suffixes
and word roots.
• Use color to emphasize the repeating patterns
• Use different font Example: Sophistication-Culture or knowledge.
• Highlight the patterns or use bold print.
(Willis, 2008)
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Vocabulary Words from Steve Jobs Biography:
1. Volatile-Explosive
2. Precocious-Showing ability at an early age
3. Prestigious-Achieved through success or fame
4. Notorious-Know widely and regarded unfavorably.
5. Sophistication-Culture or knowledge.
6. Innovation- Something new or different
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Reading Comprehension Skills
 Teach students to take notes and summarize accurately (Marzano, 2012).
 Final paper in Reading Workshop was a final paper analyzing and summarizing
the key ideas in the biography of Steve Jobs.
 Teach students to create visual representations (graphic organizers)
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Anchor Charts: During Reading Workshop, I
always post Anchor Charts in my classroom
These charts are important for ELL students who need additional support when
learning new concepts. Students can refer to them while completing an
assignment or activity.
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Writing Skills
 In Reading Workshop, because of the strong connection between reading
and writing, students practiced their writing skills daily.
 Students were taught how to write sentences and coherent paragraphs.
 They were then ready to begin writing their final essays.
 The next slide was posted in our classroom.
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Spellcheck your entire paper
Use interesting and age appropriate adjectives/verbs
Look up synonyms in the Thesaurus
Write, edit, rewrite.
Good essays have at least three drafts with corrections.
Read your essay out loud to a classmate
This will help you to find parts that need to be revised.
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Mohammed Ahmed
Roosevelt High school
Example of the first paragraph of final paper:
In this paper I will be talking about Steve Jobs childhood
and how he grew up to be one of the most amazing genius of all
times in the world of technology. What kind of story are we
talking about? We are talking about a man who endured very
difficult situations and obstacles in his lifetime. Steve’s father
worked with him in their garage. His father told him to create
everything beautiful inside and out. Steve’s father told him if you
are going to make something beautiful you should make it front
and back not just on one side. Jobs tried to make all of his Apple
and Next products perfect and beautiful. He tried to make them
simple and good-looking. Steve made a beautiful Mac computer
that is both user friendly, and beautiful.
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Student Posters
 In pairs of two, students were required to create a poster demonstrating
their understanding of the key ideas from the novel they had just finished
reading, Steve Jobs: The man who thought different.
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A Reading Workshop Student Poster:
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Background on Steve Jobs
• Took his first electronics class in high school
• After school, attended lectures at the Hewlett-Packard company where he met
Steve Wozniak during work
• Graduated high school in 1972
• Enrolled in Reed College in Oregon, latter dropped out
• Slept on his friends dorm room floor and dropped in on classes of interest
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Apple Computer
Returned to California in 1974 and was hired as a technician
for Atari
Attended meetings at Steve Wozniak’s “Homebrew
Computer Club”
Steve Jobs convinced Steve Wozniak to work with him
building computers
Apple was born on April 1st
, 1976
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Portable Audio Revolution
Less than a year after iTunes was released, Apple released the
iPod
Originally only for Mac users
In July 2002, the new iPod was available for Windows users
Sales skyrocketed and 75% of MP3 players are iPods
In eight weeks, five million songs were sold on iTunes
Took over 80% of the legal music downloading market
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Creative Innovations:
October 2005, 5th
generation of iPod was introduced
Could play music
videos and TV shows
Jobs announced the
opening of the iTunes
video store
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Pixar
Pixar was Jobs second company.
Swept the box office with its animated
films.
On January 24th
, 2006, Disney bought
out Pixar for $7.4 billion.
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Steve Jobs Introducing IPAD
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In
Conclusion
The biography of Steve Jobs motivates students to read and is an excellent book
to study during Reading Workshop when teaching English Language Learners.
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References
Beck, I.L., McKeown,M.G. & Kucan, L. (2013). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary Instruction. New York, NY : Guilford
Press.
Blachowicz, C. & Fisher, P. (2005). Best practice in vocabulary instruction (2005). Best practices in literacy instruction. New York,
NY: Guilford Press.
The man who thought different. New York, NY: Feiwel and Friends.
Blumenthal, S. (2006). The benefits of reading biographies. Practical Homeschooling #71.
Bjorklund. D.F. (2005). Children’s thinking: Cognitive development and individual differences. Belmont, CA: Thomason Learning.
Byrnes, J.P. (2008). Cognitive development and learning: In instructional contexts. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.
Dehaene,S. (2009). Reading in the brain: The science and evaluation of a human invention. New York, NY: Viking Penguin.
Gambrell, L.B., Morrow, L.M, & Pressley, M. (2007). Best practices in literacy instruction. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
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References
Jensen, E. (2008). Brain-based learning: The new paradigm of teaching. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Marzano. (2012). Classroom Instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student
achievement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Sousa, D.A. (2008). How the brain learns to read. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Sousa, D.A. (2011). How the brain learns. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Torres, M., Olancin, I. Vocabulary building strategies to use when working with ELL students. Retrieved on
6/20/2016.
Willis, J.(2008). Teaching the brain to read: Strategies for improving fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
Alexandra, VA: Association For Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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On-Line References
http://www.commlearnonline.com/files/Classroom-Tip-4-
Marzano-Vocabulary-Game.pdf
http://www.home-school.com/Articles/the-benefits-of-reading-
biographies.php
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