As an admitted fan girl who dreams of attending the San Diego Comic-Com, this story about a panel featuring students from Imperial County, California caught my attention. For the last three years, school district students have been working with the Comic Book Project to create comic books as part of a program to develop literacy and English language skills.
“(The panel will illustrate how) students throughout the United States have created comic books in their classrooms and how it’s showing growth in student development in English as a Second Language,” said a curriculum director involved with the project.
The idea of using comic books as a way to help English Language Learners got me wondering about what other school districts are doing. Many years back, I wrote a narrative piece about a Philadelphia teacher who had her students write and produce a telenovela. The story offered a great way to go beyond statistics and tell the stories of students in that school’s ELL program.
Are your school districts trying new or innovative programs to reach ELL or immigrant students? Comic books? Creative writing programs? Telenovelas? If you find something interesting and write about it, let us know.
