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I LOVE highlighting and posting on Twitter and Instagram my students' work. Just like they are proud of their work, I'm proud of it too. So, last week, right after posting about my newcomers' fantastic writing, I received a question from a follower. She asked: "How are you able to get newcomers to produce that much written language? I am super curious!"
This question surprised me because I've worked with newcomers for years, and I don't have a problem getting my newcomers to produce written work - unless, the student is a SLIFE (students with limited formal education). -- But even like that, I've figured out ways for newcomers to produce written work that demonstrates their learning...see this lesson here. Anyway, I thought I'd share here how my newcomers' written work was scaffolded so they demonstrate their full potential. Picture Book Project
In my opinion, picture books are the best text we could use with newcomers that will provide the understanding and the language they need to be able to retell the story.
I started by sharing with my newcomers a list of guiding questions we were to use to help us understand and retell the story. 
List of guiding questions
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How much do you appreciate literacy? How do you encourage literacy in your family or with students? How do you demonstrate your love and passion for literacy?
These are questions that I would have not been able to answer during the first 15 years of my life. I attended school while living in Guatemala but I didn't appreciate how much the literacy I was learning in my home country was going to be the core and foundation to everything I have accomplished here in the USA. Read more about my journey here! From the year I started working as a teacher assistant in 2004 to today -- Literacy has been something I've learned to embrace and enjoy. The foundations of the English language I learned sitting in a first-grade classroom as a teacher's assistance helped me understand how language works to make sense of words and use them to comprehend text and to write our own story. As a friend, parent, teacher, sister, and aunt, I'm always looking for ways to encourage young children to read and write. One way I do this is by celebrating literacy on days that are nationally or internationally recognized - For example, there is National Multicultural Books Day (1/29), World Read Aloud (2/3), Library Lovers Day (2/14), National Write Your Story Day (3/14), Childre's Book Day (4/2), Día de los libros (4/30), National Book Lovers Day (8/9), National Read a Book Day (9/6), International Literacy Day (9/9), I Love to Write Day (11/15), etc!! That's why tomorrow, September 8th, 2021 we are celebrating literacy in our English as a Second language classroom. |