ELL Journalists See Hillary's Blooper Photos

Photo Captions

(top left) Mona Botezan shows students her picture and bio in a Romanian newspaper. Mona is a Romanian journalist and ELL parent at Sanders Corner Elementary School.

(top right) Critiquing photos of Hillary Clinton, a unique perspective

(bottom left) ELL students at Sanders Corner find out how to be effective journalists

The school newspaper wikis are well underway. Click link to view the latest articles http://belmontstationtimes.pbworks.com/w/page/36448853/Around-the-School

I have e-mailed the link to a few parents who expressed some interest in occasionally contributing articles for a parent column. I gave them some ideas for topics they may want to write about. Some may describe adapting to life in the U.S. Others may include questions they have about the U.S. school system. Still others may write about how school was for them in their home countries. If parents are among the authors, they may be more inclined to read the paper in general. I thought it would be a fun way to involve them & some may choose to write the articles in (simple) Spanish... encouraging L1 literacy for my Spanish speaking students. L1 is an ELL term that refers to a child's first language. The more literacte a child is in L1, the more success they have reading/writing in a second or third language. I may ask the foreign language teacher (FLES) to contribute some basic Spanish captions/articles in Spanish to further promote L1 literacy.

As you can see from the photos above...

Last week I invited a parent journalist from Romania, Mrs. Mona Botezan, to come in & talk to my class about things to consider when writing newspaper articles and taking newspaper photos. The kids asked her a ton of funny questions and were very enamored at the fact that she had interviewed all kinds of famous people like Hillary Clinton. Half the group didn't know who Hillary Clinton was so that in itself was a learning moment.

Mona showed them several photos she had taken at the Dept. of State of Hillary Clinton with the Romanian prime minister. She told us how she decided which of the 100 photos to include - not ones where Hillary's mouth was open or she had weird facial features, nor ones of the back of her head. We got to see the unchosen BLOOPER photos & that was fun. :)

Asking my ELLs to write for the wiki has been completely different from asking them to write sentences, paragraphs, or essays (like I have had them do in the past.) I am not hearing ANY, ANY, ANY complaints about writing. Writing is the last language skill for learners of a foreign language to acquire. First comes listening, then speaking, then reading, and finally writing. Thus, writing activities tend to be the HARDEST, most dreaded task for many English language learners. I think this wiki has been the perfect tool to make writing authentic and afford both collaboration and proper scaffolding.

I've decided that I am not going to edit a single word on the wiki. I will help them add photos/tables and help them some with "design" but the final product will truly be their own collaborative work. This has been the first time that I've had 25 ELL students (diverse in language, grade level and writing ability) collaborate on a single product. During journalist "school" I sit back, facilitate and watch them collaborate and edit each other's work. No red pen for me! :)