Hi! So I have quite the challenge this year. One of my students doesn't speak a lick of English...he's Turkish. I mean nothing. He doesn't understand anything I say to him. Luckily, there is a Turkish student in my class to help at times. He will be going to ESL but will be with me for two periods of LA everyday. Help! Suggestions on what to have him do without making him feel totally left out?
I had a 3rd grader that came to me not knowing a single word in English last year. (He spoke Arabic.) It takes a lot of gesturing. You will be surprised at how quickly they pick it up though. When I left in December, he could follow me in math. Reading was obviously much harder for him.
Is he literate in Turkish? (Good news: Turkish uses the Roman alphabet, or something like it, though he'll need to learn the digraphs.) Wikipedia, may its name be praised, has a pretty good overview of the Turkish language at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_language, and that can help you and the ESL teacher figure out where he's likely to struggle and where he isn't likely to. It's a fascinating language...
He is literate in Turkish. I just know that he won't be able to do what I'm doing with the rest of the class, even if I tried to modify. I'm wondering if anyone knows of good resources out there that could help him.
I meant he is literate in Turkish, not English. Oops. I'll edit the post. Brain fried after busy first week of school!
Hugs, HufflePuff. That makes much more sense. Try Googling "turkish-english visual dictionary". Oxford University Press has a good one - intended for adults, but still accessible - that should serve well in the classroom. Look also for online resources for (adult) speakers of Turkish who want to learn English. For that matter, a regular Turkish-English bilingual dictionary should serve him well, too. Google Translate can produce teeth-jarringly bad translations of sentences, but if you've got an iPad or can get him on a computer, Google Translate might be helpful.
