Scenario Response 4

In my Journalism classes, which are an elective, I have many ELL students of varying levels of English fluency. I do the following to try to make the classes culturally friendly.

 

1. I pair up a student with Advanced or Intermediate English language fluency with those students who are Speech emerging, or, in some cases, newly arrived students with limited English language capabilities.

 

2. I provide assignment instructions in all of the languages spoken in my classroom.

 

3. In some instances, I have discovered that one of my students has limited literacy skills in their native language, in which case I pair that student with a student that possesses Advanced English Language fluency and a high level of literacy competence.

 

4. We have a Weekly Wall where we put up articles from various newspapers. I encourage the students to bring in articles from Spanish language newspapers, Portuguese-language newspapers, French-language newspapers, whatever language they wish.

 

5. When the students critique newspaper articles as part of their Weekly Newsroom Assignment, they get to select articles from any newspaper they wish. We have electronic access to newspapers from all over the world. Student are permitted to write their analysis in their own language, but they must also attempt to translate their work into English.

 

6. The plan for the second semester is to create a school newspaper that has articles in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.