I am a Language Arts teacher in a rural area in Arizona. One of my students moved from Mexico to the U.S. to live with his father two weeks before school started. He's in 7th grade and he's a great kid, but he knows the bare minimum of English, and we have NO ESL program. I know about as much Spanish as he knows English...so not very much. He's also in my largest class, 32 kids with 3 behavioral IEP's. Definitely not ideal. I know that group work is important for ESL learners, and there are bilingual students, but unfortunately with this class group work is usually does more to hinder than help the education process.
His father does speak English pretty well, so I am going to start sending work home for him to work on and practice with his father's help. My question is, what type of work do I send home? What should ESL learners with very limited English learn first? Vocabulary? Nouns? I'm kind of at a loss right now. I can read a little bit of Spanish, thanks to 6 years of east coast Spanish lessons, but I cannot communicate with him. I feel awful that I haven't done more so far, but the first 9 weeks are over, so now that things have calmed down I would like to do more.
So, what should I start with??