I think I now have a game plan – just from a few days of this discussion – that works for me. I am very grateful to the group for helping me formulate it. It is described in the ELA/TPRS 5 article below. I know it will grow to include other things.
Basically, and yes I tend to oversimplify but since I am not an ELA expert I have to generalize, it’s about building community so that the child feels honored and not shamed for his accent and limited knowledge of the language. It’s about building community first before language gains can happen.
It’s about rising, pulling, giving a hand up, doing whatever I have to do as a teacher to honor and respond to the child’s need to be a person who counts in a group. That’s my first move. I want to use focus on the third step of TPRS to do that – reading. I always want to consciously build community while working with Step 3.
But I want the reading to be created by him and the group that he trusts and feels important in. I don’t want him to be forced to read “up”, as they do now, but “down”, as Michele said. I want him to have access during class to an online dictionary so that he can instantly know what the target structures mean, like Judy said.
I don’t know how else to address distance caused by language and cultural differences than by inviting the child into the classroom process as more than a cardboard cutout of a human being. In a way, an ELA class is a microcosm of the world, all packed into one little space. Each nation wants to count, to not be bullied.
(à suivre)