My students need classic children's BILINGUAL books in their native languages of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Spanish to read at home with their families, especially books like "The Hungry Caterpillar", etc.
My ESL students make "E Pluribus Unum" come alive! They speak a variety of languages, come from many different cultures, and are what truly makes our country a melting pot. Many are refugees; strong, resilient survivors of hurricanes, war, genocide, and other trauma, all embracing American culture and trying to learn English.
My ESL students and their families speak many different languages that need to kept alive while they both are learning English at the same time!
Research shows that a firm foundation in a person's first/native language is crucial to soaring success in acquiring a second language, especially for children.
My students and their parents are "hungry" to learn English, yet often school is the only place where they are exposed to English. I'm trying to change this, to help them keep growing in both languages,
My Project
Many of my Chinese, Vietnamese, and Spanish ESL students have little or no books at home in their native languages. Imagine having to leave your first home suddenly due to a hurricane, or other traumatic situation, leaving everything behind, as many of our newly-arriving Puerto Rican families had to. Yikes! How can parents help their children learn to read in their first language without any resources/books in those languages? That is why I am creating a Bilingual Book Exchange, so my ESL students can take home books that they have/will be exposed to in their American classrooms, to read with their families in both their first languages AND in English .
As my ESL students and their families read these bilingual books in English and their native languages at home together, it will be an empowering, bonding, and fun experience for both of them as they learn from each other!
Research shows that the rate of successful second language acquisition is built upon the strength, support, and reinforcement of the first language. In other words, the better you know your first language, the faster you will learn a second one, especially if you can read in your first language!
The books that I selected for this Bilingual Book Exchange contain vocabulary and grammar themes that are crucial to successful language learning. For example, the "Very Hungry Caterpillar" book contains days of the week, foods, ordinal numbers, colors, sequencing, the life cycle of the butterfly, etc. The "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" book emphasizes colors, animals, question word formation, sequencing, pronouns. etc. I plan to send one bilingual book home each week with each of my Chinese, Vietnamese,and Spanish ESL students, to share and read with their families, then to exchange it weekly for a different book.
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