Short Structured Role-Play

by Dr. Lora Beth Escalante

My son’s favorite page, and also his favorite voice to do (Mama Worm).

Have you read Diary of a Worm (Cronin, 2003)?  I have enjoyed it, possibly a hundred times, with my kids. It’s one of our favorites. I have even eyed it across the couch and picked it up to thumb through by myself. Yep. I find it endearing and whimsical, imagining what life could be like as a worm. I have no legs, yet my best friend is a spider with eight of them! I was cozy underground but forced to abandon my home in haste when a torrential rain threatened to drown us. Seeing the nuances of how a worm uniquely performs everyday tasks, such as holding a pencil (with a tail), sleeping (with leaves as bedsheets), and dancing the hokey pokey creates a silly connection with my everyday tasks as a human. There are other books in this series and countless other titles written from unique perspectives. (I often choose my own books based on the perspective from which they are written, too. When narrators shift each chapter, I look forward to how each character reacts internally and externally to the events in a story.) 

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Help Newcomers Tell Their Stories

by Elise White Diaz

It is March. Your class is settled and you are either gearing up for (or in the midst of) State Testing. You have been working with your multilingual students all year, and they are ready. Just as you breathe a sigh of relief and find your footing, the announcements come: a new student from out of the country is waiting in the office for you. Then another, and another. Now the question becomes, how do we integrate these newcomers into the class and curriculum when they are so far behind the language levels of their peers (who have been here all year)? The answer is so simple and intuitive it almost feels too easy: allow beginning language learners to express themselves through pictorial representation, then leverage co-created text to engage them in all four language domains.

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