Chapter 3: Teaching Language Arts To Ells

Racine was a young adolescent from Congo whose first experience in a classroom was when she stepped into Sam Roman’s 6th grade science class at Thomas Jefferson International Newcomer’s Academy. At age 16, she towered over the other students in the class, but her smile and warmth won everyone’s hearts. She spoke no English and had not had any formal schooling in any language. As a result, she was illiterate. She understood some basic French, but her native language was Swahili. The first month of school was rather traumatic for her as she struggled to understand English with very little success. Mr. Roman was able to help her navigate daily activities using conversational French, but she was unable to understand academic content in French. The Swahili instructional aide was only available to come to the class for one period a day to assist Racine and when he did, Racine bombarded him with questions on every subject area. As she began to utter basic words in English, she asked Mr. Roman for a math book to practice. When he gave her a workbook with basic arithmetic, she returned it fully completed in less than two weeks. Her determination and dedication propelled her to improve by leaps and bounds. From a pre-primer reading level in August, she progressed to a mid-first grade level by December. She was so determined to learn that by the end of the school year she was reading at a mid-third grade level. Due to her age and her progress, she was placed in the ninth grade for the next school year. Today she is on track to graduate from high school in two years.