At our all girls' public school, we have close to 50 English Language Learners coming from Yemen, Egypt, and the Dominican Republic. Over 30 of our English Language Learners speak Arabic, and we do not have books written in Arabic for them to be able to read independently. Our girls are desperate to be able to read novels in their home language, but these books do not appear on the websites we are able to use to purchase books as a school. Our Spanish-speaking students have a variety of books to choose from, because books in Spanish are easily bought through these websites.
These books written in Arabic are: classics that our girls will be able to use as companion texts in their English Language Arts classes, graphic novels, science fiction novels, popular young adult novels, relevant series like The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, and more. We want our students to be able to enjoy the love of reading in their home language while simultaneously learning to read and write in English in school.
The girls chose many of these books themselves! We should all be able to be life-long readers, and we want our girls to be able to read for their own enjoyment in their native language, just like we do every single day.
About my class
At our all girls' public school, we have close to 50 English Language Learners coming from Yemen, Egypt, and the Dominican Republic. Over 30 of our English Language Learners speak Arabic, and we do not have books written in Arabic for them to be able to read independently. Our girls are desperate to be able to read novels in their home language, but these books do not appear on the websites we are able to use to purchase books as a school. Our Spanish-speaking students have a variety of books to choose from, because books in Spanish are easily bought through these websites.
These books written in Arabic are: classics that our girls will be able to use as companion texts in their English Language Arts classes, graphic novels, science fiction novels, popular young adult novels, relevant series like The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, and more. We want our students to be able to enjoy the love of reading in their home language while simultaneously learning to read and write in English in school.
The girls chose many of these books themselves! We should all be able to be life-long readers, and we want our girls to be able to read for their own enjoyment in their native language, just like we do every single day.
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