Teacher Discussion Forums

Greetings,

Friends of ours are in the process of adopting 2 10 year old boys from Kenya. They'll come to live in a smaller village in Wisconsin. My understanding is that these boys are in an orphanage setting and, likely, receiving some education but that is likely quite limited. Obviously they'll be experiencing significant culture shock and our area in Wisconsin has very few students of color to begin with.

I'm studying ESL but mainly in adult education so my knowledge in the elementary area is very limited.

I'd appreciate any good links or other resources that I can share with the parents. The small village school district does not have any ESL program although a 1/2 time aide works with some of the migrant students as we have migrant families in the area who work at area vegetable canning factories.

Best, Ken in WI

At this tender age, and English being an L 2, use visuals rather than texts wherever possible!

I recommend kidsstuff.com, (with a lot of downloadables). There were a couple of other websites that I occasionally used (but they have slipped my mind temporarily), so I suggest you do a google search for kindergarten.

The only books I could recommend would be picture dictionaries(I like the Oxford Picture dictionary). These will help the boys to communicate to those around them. For lesson time, I would recommend lots of realia (plastic fruit, play money, toy animals, toy kitchens, occupation costumes, and other realia toys that are generally geared towards preschool children) so that you can practice conversation patterns with them in the guise of role play and imagination play.

Thanks for the information and links for resources.

I'll pass these along to the family.

Best, Ken in WI