Multilingual Learners are referred to as English Language Learners (ELLs) in most United States classrooms. The name itself sets up a deficit framework, one that privileges English and fails to uplift students’ experiences and knowledge. English Language Learner programs are relatively new, with the development of programs and philosophy shifting over time. While program development continually changes to acknowledge students’ expertise as language learners, there continues to be room for growth. Those who develop and teach these programs need to continue to build on students’ linguistic and cultural knowledge, as well as students’ multiple intelligences and literacies. Campano & Ghiso, 2011, explain how 21st-century schools “house students who communicate in numerous languages, claim multiple identities, and often have ties that extend beyond our nation’s borders”. They further explain how literature and curriculum have a responsibility to reflect students’ identities. To shift to a culturally and historically responsive curriculum, there needs to be a continued cultural shift towards valuing students’ expertise, experiences, and ways of knowing.

I work with fourth and fifth grade ELL students in a large K-8 school in the Northeast section of Philadelphia. My students have a variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds, including but not limited to Guatemala, Brazil, Honduras, El Salvador, Columbia, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Afghanistan, China, and more. My students are at various levels of closeness to immigration- with many students newly immigrated and many being first generation immigrants.

When accepting new students, English Learner programs focus on acquisition of English, with minimal emphasis on students’ first language skills and cultural background. Up until the 1960’s, public schools provided a “sink or swim” mentality for English learners and bilingual students. While programs and policies for Bilingual and English Language Learner programs have developed since the 1960’s, it was not until the 1990’s when reconfiguration of Title VII programs reinforced research into foreign language instruction in public schools (Colorin Colorado). The current ELD (English Language Development) Instructional Guide used by the School District of Philadelphia states in its mission, “All English Learners and Dual Language Learners have access to a high-quality education that values students’ linguistic and cultural assets.” The focus on students’ linguistic and cultural assets is a step in the right direction. Curriculum that centers students’ lives “[…] tells students they matter; that the pain and the joy in their lives can be part of the curriculum.” (Christensen, p. 8) This unit further focuses on strategies and activities that build on students’ cultural capital and experiences.

Students’ backgrounds, experiences in their home countries, immigration stories, and knowledge of two or more languages are often ignored for the purposes of moving into acquiring English skills and acclimating and assimilating to American schools and culture. The curriculum sends messages to students about the importance of their voices within the culture, and shows them what they can become and how they can make changes in the larger world. “When curriculum fails to acknowledge students’ multiple experiences, multilingual resources, and diverse modes of visual and written literacy, it limits students’ development of voice and the expression of their identities” (Muhammad). Curriculum also privileges the written word over visual language, although developing literacy goes hand in hand with both visual literacy and using visual art to communicate. Curriculum that uplifts different ways of knowing can include room for divergent ways of thinking that are nonlinear and do not follow a specific formula. Anzaldua (1987) describes this divergent thinking as being “Mestiza consciousness”, one that is “characterized by movement away from set patterns and goals and toward a whole perspective one that includes rather than excludes” (p. 101).

This curriculum unit explores Multilingual Learners’ use of poetry to explore and share their identities. Students who are just learning English, labeled Newcomers and Level 1s, will build language to describe place and feelings about place. “The ties between ‘place’ and identity are fundamental to the lives of individuals and groups. They shape the ways in which relationships and social networks are created and maintained, how heritage is understood, reconceived and rewritten, how everyday life is anchored by a strong sense of self, and how narratives and histories are located in time and space (…)” (Miller, p. 284). Students will explore questions while first reading examples of poetry from refugee and immigrant perspectives. These readings focus on students making images in their minds and creating or finding imagery to match the words as they read. “Poets need to keep all five senses- and possibly a few more- on continual alert, ready to translate the world through their bodies, to reinvent it in language” (Addonizio & Lauz).

This unit investigates the inquiry question:

How does writing poetry about memories of places, and creating images connected to this poetry, give Multilingual students opportunities to explore and share their identities?

In this unit, students craft poems about their identity through exploring their reactions and feelings in different spaces in their memories. Students build to writing poetry by answering questions, simple prompts, and speaking and writing about images of places. Students read mentor texts including “Somos como las nubes / We Are Like the Clouds” by Jorge and “I am From” poems.  Students begin with George Ella Lyon’s “Where I’m From” poems, which “are just the facts of their lives, and the beauty of those facts add up to a literary show-and-tell about students’ cultures” (Christensen, p. 20) Christensen explains how the “Where I’m From” poem can include items from in or around students’ homes and neighborhoods, names of relatives, sayings from home, names of food dishes, names of places students keep childhood memories, and more. Using the textures of home and memories of different homes, students ground in words connected to their identities and share them with classmates. Gloria Anzaldua explains, “For me food and certain smells are tied to my identity, to my homeland”. As part of the final product of the unit, students bring in or find images from previous places they have inhabited in some way. “[…] the genre of poetry lends itself powerfully to exploring the multiple borders and crossings that shape my students’ lives.” (Sophia Renda, p. 2). In  this unit, students connect to memories, images, and their five senses to write about past experiences. Students use the questions, sentence starters and word banks as scaffolds to get to the place to be able to write the final poetry. Students find images on the internet, draw, and find images in magazines and other paper media, to collage images that relate to the poetry. Students read their poems in groups, and display them alongside their images for others to view. These scaffolded activities allow multilingual students who have various levels of literacy in their first language to develop language and imagery for poetry.

In the 2023-2024 school year I was with 4th grade ESL students, and I will be moving to 5th grade and working with the same students in the 2024-2025 school year. The unit spans about three weeks of instruction at the beginning of the school year. It functions as a form of getting to know each other and grounding in identities. The unit first begins with reading poetry, as well as discussing and finding images related to that poetry. Students read poems written by refugees and immigrants, the majority of which talk about place and spaces that the writers have inhabited. Students read “I am From” poems by students, to give examples of using concrete places and imagery to write poetry. While reading these poems, the teacher and students talk about creating imagery in our minds. Newcomer students and students newly learning English vocabulary need support in understanding the meaning of nouns and descriptive imagery. To build English language knowledge, students work on matching pictures with imagery in poems.  Some images will be provided and matched at the beginning. Over time, students will find their own images and create collages based on word associations. They can use tools such as Google Translate and image search to find images, or search in their first language, then label the images in English. This process of matching images to poems builds vocabulary for connecting imagery to words and poetry. A focus on English language skills embedded into these activities build grammar, vocabulary and ability to write descriptive sentences.

Students receive questions to build their vocabulary around different places they have inhabited, and how these places made them feel. Students read and then form their own “I Am From” poems, which allow students to use various nouns and everyday descriptive words, without being tied to a particular poetic form. The teacher builds vocabulary for specific, common places, including houses, parks, and stores with images and vocabulary activities. These nouns are applied within the “I am From” poem templates. “I am From” poems provide a way to enter into the work of creating poems in an accessible way, giving students opportunities to practice speaking and reading English. Students practice answering simple questions about the text they read, which will focus them on ideas for their poems. Questions will include, “Where were they?” “What did they see?” “What did they hear?” “What did they feel?”. They will also read their poems aloud to partners or small groups. A focus on English language skills embedded into these activities build vocabulary and grammar in the poetry format.

To build descriptive writing, the teacher leads activities in using adjectives to describe images of familiar places. Students view common images of places and match adjectives to these places. Further, using five senses in the present tense provides a concrete way for students to practice descriptive language in a concrete way. Images and templates scaffold a foundation for students to write poetry using their five senses. The teacher will also lead present and past tense verb exercises, developing practice in creating descriptive sentences about place. The teacher asks questions, including, “What are places that are important to you?” and “What is a place you were at in the past that you remember?” The teacher and students discuss place, and what it feels like to be in different places. The process starts with simple images, such as beaches, forests, schools and homes. Places can include any places students have experienced, including but not limited to places they did or did not enjoy, places that bring up good memories, home places, places of vacation, or places they previously lived. The activity may uncover trauma for students who came to the United States under difficult circumstances, or if they frequently move from one place to another in any capacity.

The unit allows students to talk about any place that is meaningful to them, allowing them to bring the depth they desire to the work. For example, they can write and talk about a time they went on vacation, what they saw, heard, and tasted, as well as how they felt. Students practice answering accessible questions in a journal format, including “What was the weather in this place like? How did it make you feel?”, “What did you see?”, “What did you feel?” and , and “Who were you with? How did you feel with them?” “What is a place you remember? What do you remember seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, and more?” Students will be encouraged to bring in, find images on the internet, or draw of the places they want to talk about. This will allow them to match visual imagery with the vocabulary they build through the unit.

The final product includes students writing poetry with imagery about places they have been in the past. Sentence stems and word banks are provided for the poem format. For example, students are given a sentence such as “When I was at … I saw…” “When I was at… I felt…” “When I was at … I heard…” and other sentences to build students’ writing about their sensory and emotional experiences in places from their past. Word banks are built from students’ visual imagery that they collected through reading poems and answering questions. At the end of the unit, students are given the option to draw pictures and create collages associated with their final poems. Students read their poems out loud and display their poems to the class, creating an environment for students to learn from each other.

Timeline: Three weeks of lessons, within the first two months of school, during the time of “getting to know you” and setting classroom culture.

Week 1, Day 1: Objectives: Establish unit activities and goals, read “I am From” poem examples.

• Explain to students that through this unit, we will explain important places and experiences in our past, and write descriptive poems about an important place in our pasts. This will be both to get to know each other, and to learn more about how to describe places in English.

Week 1, Day 2: Read “I am From” poem examples. Do a shared writing, using examples of places, objects, food, people, and more to create poems, using a template. Give students opportunities to start to write their own “I am From” poems using templates and images. (Appendix A)

• Students practice answering simple questions about the “I am From” poem they read, which will focus them on ideas for their poems. Questions will include, “Where were they?” “What did they see?” “What did they hear?” “What did they feel?”

Week 1, Day 3: Match provided describing words to images. (Appendix B) Explain that we will be describing important places in our lives.

Week 1, Day 4: Complete a shared writing with the teacher to describe different, common settings students most likely have been in. View picture dictionaries within themes of common spaces including houses, parks, and stores. (Appendix C)

• Differentiation: If students need to review nouns for common places and objects, make flash cards and review as a group or as a center activity.

Week 1, Day 5: Invite students to start thinking of homes, parks and stores to write in their own “I am From” poems. Students fill in templates to begin writing their own “I am From” poems, using nouns matched to the images of common places. (Appendix A)

Week 2: Objectives: Write “I am From” poems. Read examples of poetry by immigrants and refugees from “Somos como los nubes/ We are Like Clouds” children’s book, and Tio Juancho by Ruben Antonio Villalobos (Appendix C) Read sensory poems written in present tense. Begin to find images of important places we have been in the past, and make slides with them. Start to use descriptive words to describe these images.

Week 2, Day 1: View students’ beginnings of “I am From” poems from the previous week. If students need guidance, model writing “I am From” poems, using the picture dictionaries and nouns gathered from previous lessons. Students continue to write their own “I am From” poems using an adapted poem template. (Appendix A)

Week 2, Day 2: Read example sensory poems. Talk about the five senses. Practice saying sentences in the present, using, “I see, I hear, I smell, I feel, I taste” with images to match each. (Appendix E) Explain to students that they can bring in images or start finding them related to past experiences that they would like to write about. (Discuss how students can write about a place they lived, a school they went to, a class when they were younger, a previous country they lived in, a vacation, or something else.)

• Do a shared writing of sensory poems in the present tense, using the template. Start with observing the current room you’re in. Then, read poetry examples based on a specific time, such as a holiday. Encourage students to make mental images, and use images to illustrate them. (Appendix E)

Week 2, Day 3: Students will write their own present-tense sensory poems.
Lead a mini-lesson on present and past tense, and how the form changes with -ed or irregulars. (Appendix F)

Differentiation: Repeat the concept with exercises in sentence context if students do not use past tense fluidly. Explain that we will be using past tense with sensory writing.

Week 2, Day 4: Students will continue to work on changing verbs to past tense in sentences.

Week 2, Day 5: Students share which places have been important to them in the class. The teacher completes think-aloud, writing on an anchor chart that says “Important places to us”.

Week 3 Objectives: Write sensory poems about important places in our past, using nouns and adjectives. Complete sensory poems based on personal or found imagery, and share them with partners. (Appendix F)

Week 3, Day 1: Explain to students that they will be writing sensory poems about an important place in their past. Students begin to gather imagery on Google Slides of their important place. Teacher models matching describing words to the images of the places, and students practice writing these words on their slides.

Week 3, Day 2: Students will find images that bring up sensory emotions. Students will use the sensory writing template (Appendix F) to write sensory memories in the past tense of this place. Students put the image of the place, and write sensory memories using past tense.

Week 3, Day 3: Students create a final product of their past tense poem with imagery on a poster. They can complete this with a Google Slide printed out, or with a hand-written poem with drawn, collaged, or printed imagery to match. (Appendix F)

Week 3, Day 4: Students will continue to make imagery based on poems. Students will read their poems to the class to practice oral language.

• If time, the teacher meets with students to help them complete their poems.

Week 3, Day 5: Final sharing of poetry and images. Students can walk through a gallery walk of each others’ final poems.

Andaluzia, Gloria. Borderlands: La Frontera. San Francisco: Ante Lute books, 1987

Addonizio, Kim and Laux, Dorrianne. The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. Norton & Company, 1997.

Campano, Gerald. & Ghiso, M. P. (2010) Immigrant students as cosmopolitan intellectuals. In P. Coates, P. Enciso, C. Jenkins, & S. Wolf (Eds.), Handbook on research on children’s and young adult literature. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Christensen, Linda. Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching About Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word: 2nd Edition. Wisconsin: Rethinking Schools, Ltd., 2017

Ghiso, M.P. (2016). The Laundromat as the transnational local: Young children’s literacies of interdependence. Teachers College Record, 118(1), 1-46.

Yoon. (2019) Playful Literacies, Creativity, and Multilingual Practices. The Reading Teacher, Vol 72, No. 5, pp. 551-557

Jorge Argueta, Alfronso Ruano. (2016) “Somos como las nubes / We Are Like the Clouds”. Groundwood Books, House of Anansi Press.

Miller, Cynthia J. “Immigrants, Images and Identity: Visualising Homelands Across Borders.” Tracing an Indian Diaspora: Contexts, Memories, Representations. Edited by Parvati Raghuram, Ajaya Kumar Sahoo, Brig Maharaj, Dave Sangha, 2008, pp. 284-298.

Muhammad, Gholdy. “Unearthing Joy: A Guide to Culturally and Historically Responsive Teaching and Learning”, Scholastic, Inc., 2023

Office of Multilingual Curriculum & Programs, The School District of Philadelphia Office of Academic Supports. (2021-22) English Language Development/Bilingual Education Program Manual. Retrieved from: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kr6mlB12Z6XVGIvd3PQaR9KFXujtw5Leaj6jJs7aENY/edit

Rhenda, Sophia. “Borders and Doorways: Using Poetry of Constraint to Explore Boundaries and Possibilities”. Teachers’ Institute of Philadelphia. Retrieved from: https://theteachersinstitute.org/curriculum_unit/borders-and-doorways-using-poetry-of-constraint-to-explore-boundaries-and-possibilities/

Thacher, A. & Battery, A. (2023). Evolution of English Language Learning in US Schools  American Library Association

Texas Education Agency (2010). A Chronology of Federal Law and Policy Impacting Language Minority Students  Excerpt from Language Proficiency Assessment Committee Framework Manual. Retrieved from colorincolorado.org on 2/25/24

Standards:

Reading:
ELD-LA.4-5. Narrate. Interpretive: Interpret language arts narratives by determining the meaning of words and phrases used in texts.

Speaking and writing:
ELD-LA.4-5.Inform.Expressive: Construct informational texts in language arts that introduce and define a topic for an audience, and add precision and details to define, describe, compare, and classify a topic

Appendix A:

Where I’m From poem template for newcomers:

“Where I’m From” original poem by George Ella Lyons: https://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html

Appendix B:

Imagery:

Match the words to the images: rainy          cloudy           sunny trees

Appendix C: Poem examples from “Somos como los nubes/ We are Like Clouds” children’s book:

Tio Juancho by Ruben Antonio Villalobos:

Appendix D: Common place nouns:

Show picture dictionary images and practice using nouns to describe them.

Appendix E: Sensory poem examples and sensory writing sentence starters:

Title:

______ is ______ (color)

It tastes like _________

It sounds like _________

It smells like _________-

It looks like __________

It makes me feel ________.

Sensory writing:

Place:

Appendix F:

Past tense anchor charts and practice:

Appendix G:

Past tense sensory writing: