3E | Home-School Connection / Supporting SLIFE UNIT 1 Suggestions Supporting Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE) There are several areas in Unit 1 where SLIFE will need additional support. Review the suggestions below with colleagues to find ways to meet the needs of individual students. Each student has his or her own story, unique situation, assets, and abilities to capitalize on. Stress Asking students to learn about ancestry and heritage may trigger memories of trauma. Students who were born and/or raised in refugee camps might not have direct knowledge of their ancestry. Others may have faced oppression based on their heritage and feel hesitant or frightened to discuss it. Also, activating memories may prove traumatic for some learners who may have had to say good-bye to family members, special teachers, and life-long friends when they left their home countries. Students may be overwhelmed by the new environment and language. If students become emotional, allow them to simply listen to their classmates and rejoin activities when they feel ready. Frustration Students may be excited about the opportunity to attend school on a regular basis or for the first time, but multilingual learners may find they are academically behind their Englishspeaking peers. This can cause frustration. Be patient and encourage students to be patient with themselves as acclimation and learning take time. Social-emotional Support Some schools have “Student Ambassadors” for the purpose of supporting SLIFE. If possible, have a peer serve as an ambassador. Invite the partners to be seated together to offer adolescent level paraphrasing and re-explaining of tasks in the unit. Select a peer who is supportive, encouraging, and culturally sensitive. Follow cultural norms when placing students in pairs. Socialemotional support is critical in this transition. Home-School Connection Family members can offer strong support in this unit. As students and their families consider their ancestry and heritage, they may want to peruse any family memorabilia, such as photographs, artifacts, mementos, or other special tokens. Memories and traditions can come to life with oral storytelling, and recollection of stories or anecdotes that have been passed down. Students can go through each page of the unit and view intergenerational pictures or other visuals that can prompt a discussion of identity and particular traits (physical or personality) that their family feels are special. In addition, students can view unit pages where students “meet a specialist” (e.g., Meet a Geologist, Meet a Historian, Meet a Chef) and rewrite several examples using members of their own families as experts in a special arena. For multilingual learners with family members who do not speak English in the home, they can invite their family members along a picture walk of the unit and explain in their home language some important ideas they are learning, as well as some key vocabulary they can discuss in parallel. Families can reread some of the students’ favorite texts together. In the event students cannot take texts home, they can view the digital copy of the text online and point out the items mentioned above or if digital access is an issue, then specific pages with examples of a “Meet the ...,” and a page from a favorite reading can be photocopied. The most important thing is to activate the funds of knowledge each family possesses that relate to the themes, tasks, and topics.
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