High School

For 8 weeks I student taught at an urban high school in the Twin Cities. I was in a classroom of WIDA Level 2 students who had arrived to the country within 2 years. Over half of them were from East Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, or Kenya), and except for two the rest were from Mexico or Central or South America.
I sought to teach a unit that would integrate language objectives with academic standards and foster use of all four language modalities. So I taught a unit on immigration in the United States. This topic invited all of the students into the content because it connected to background knowledge the students already had and enabled them to bring in their own personal stories and experiences. Having background knowledge in the topic enables student motivation to grasp and comprehend high-level and complex texts. 

The students were guided through a series of lessons on vocabulary, language functions, and text analysis strategies before reading and analyzing high-level texts on different immigration statuses in the United States. After learning about government policy on immigration the students then analyzed the immigration plans of presidential candidates and President Obama. To culminate the lesson with student production the students were then tasked with authoring their own immigration plan proposals and presenting their plans to their classmates in a mock “presidential speech.” 

Go through the presentations below to see some of how students were guided through this project. Video of students presenting their plans is above. All students in the video had consent forms signed, still, a screen is used to protect student privacy.