[TCHKDG]

I am a regular ed Kindergarten teacher, but will have 2 little ones this year with very little or no English. The little girl has some fluency, but the boy and his family moved from China recently, and none of them speak much English. As far as I know I will have no help in the classroom, and our classes usually run about 20-22 students. Any ideas will be appreciated.

[Marqueza]

Hi,
I am new to this site, and I'm really excited to see all the postings related to ESL issues.
I teach ESL and Spanish Literacy in elementary, from K-6. It has been my experience that ELL students in Kindergarten do really well learning English, as well as the academic concepts. The Kinder environment is so hands on and visually rich that pretty much it acts as an ESL classroom.
I would recommend you to use as many visuals as you can and to keep your instructions for the ELL students as basic as possible, modeling as you speak, but keeping your expectations high at the same time. They will understand and learn quickly. It is also useful to pair them or seat them next to some of your better English speaking students, so they can imitate and learn from them.
I don't know if your school has any ESL support during the day, as my school does. We pull out the Spanish speaking students during the reading block to teach them Spanish literacy as well as English language development. This way they learn in their native language and at the same time they develop their English skills in the classroom.
Best of luck!

I am getting ready to teach my second year of kindergarten and I will have a student fresh from Korea who speaks NO English. Thank you for your response to the first post. I want to keep my expectations up, but I am so concerned that I will leave him in the dust, especially those first couple of weeks when I am explaining classroom procedures. Any other helpful ideas would also really be a blessing.

[Tigger518]

If you can have any pictures of the rules/routines will help as well. Also having other children act out the rules and later (when the students are more comfortable in the classroom) you could have them act them out as well. Like the other poster said a lot of pictures and visuals are great.

[TCHKDG]

Thanks for the help. I have also been concerned about parent/teacher conferences. Mom speaks very little English, dad none at all. Any special ideas in that realm?

[Marqueza]

I usually find out if there are any more families in my school that speak the same language as my ESL students. In your case, find out if there are any more Chinese families in your school or any other school in the district. Sometimes they will offer to help during conferences. Also, maybe the district could hire an interpreter for the conferences.
It would be very useful for the family of your new student to get a translation of your daily routine in their language, as well as your expectations for the school year, so they have a good idea of what's going on and they can also explain to the child what to expect every day in the classroom.
I hope this helps a little

[TCHKDG]

Thanks again. We are a very small community. Our school is the only school for our grades, but I might be able to contact a local school district that is larger. Thanks for the help.