I’m teaching Refugee by Alan Gratz with one of my ELL classes and so it’s important that we spend time building background knowledge. This happens to be a class where none of them are coming from a refugee background, so the way I’m approaching this novel is different than I would have done in previous years when I have worked with students who are refugees.
I read Refugee after the hearty recommendation by many, many teachers on the Facebook group for Notice and Note (fabulous reading resource, highly recommend).
We just started last week, but we are going to be doing a lot, a lot of background building for the novel. Most of my kids are either relatively new to the country and don’t have a strong background in what is normally taught in US schools, or relatively new to the country and relatively low-level linguistically in English, or both.
Multimedia Document
The facebook group I mentioned above had some GREAT resources to use for this book.
I also recently completed the Google educator training and learned some cool things. One of which is the idea of multimedia documents. This is basically where you out a variety of internet resources into a document to give to students directly or use yourself.
So, for this book, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve compiled all in the links and resources here in this handy document:
Please feel free to use it when teaching this book and I’m sharing it here. (You can’t click the hyperlinks above, it’s just a screenshot of the document in my google drive folder.)
I’m sharing the link instead of just posting them because I want to be able to continue to add to the document as I find more relevant things for background building for this novel.
Let me know what you think or if you have other resources for this book that I could add!
I’ve also finally added an additional post where I share some other during reading resources for this book.
Question: what is your pacing for teaching this book?
I’m using it with a group of low-intermediate students. We read 1-2 chapters each day and fill out a graphic organizer to keep track of the information from each character’s story. I planned to share that resource here as well. I’m using a background building article 1-2 times a week.
I am happy to have found your website and look forward to exploring it more! I teach two sections of sheltered English 9 (all ELLs from various countries, mostly refugees, mostly entering or emerging English proficiency but also a few transitioning students. This is my 16th year, but my second year teaching the sheltered classes, and I am dual certified in English and TESOL. I would like to teach this with them, but am wondering if it is better for a class read-aloud of a novel study. I saw your other post about how critical it is to read a book aloud with ELLs, but had some questions about that; did you mean a read aloud as like a 10 minute read/think aloud activity? Do you assign any work with it or is it for pleasure/listening skill building? What about when students are absent?
You could do either with them! I love doing a read aloud because it is so beneficial for the kids and for the most part, they love. I think if all the students you currently have can read this book with some instruction you can definitely do it as a novel study and choose something else to read aloud. As far as my process for a read aloud, I choose a section of the book (10-15 minutes worth of reading), I create prediction questions that will be answered during the reading. I project the questions (two questions per section, two possible answers for each question) and then have them put their name under what they believe the right answer will be. If they have selected the correct answer, I put their names in a raffle. So, each student has the possibility of getting two raffle tickets per day. I draw one name at the end of the month and give a small prize. Students who are absent have to get filled in by a peer, or by me. As I am reading aloud, I also stop and do quick comprehension checks, as well as discuss difficult vocabulary and sometimes make connections or highlight important points. A warning though– don’t stop too often or you will lose the flow of the book and the kids will lose interest. I hope this helps!
I am going to start with Home of the Brave by Kristina Applegate. I am also thinking of structuring my 48 minute class as 10-15 min. of Read Aloud/Think Aloud, 5-10 min. of writing/journaling related to the RA/TA, 15 min. vocabulary practice alternated with 15 min. of grammar lesson/practice. I have heard that since our ENL teachers now have a curriculum, grammar doesn’t get enough attention in the stand-alone class, and I know that English teachers in general do not have time for explicit grammar instruction. What do you think about my ideas? Any more advice?
I think that sounds amazing! I loved Home of the Brave. I do prediction questions for it and do it as a read aloud. Your structure sounds good. Even better if you could pull academic vocabulary from the text, although Home of the Brave doesn’t have a very difficult vocabulary level. I think grammar instruction can be valuable when paired with other authentic literacy activities as you are suggesting. Good luck!
I teach ESL intermediate/advanced, and a mainstream Humanities class with a large proportion of advanced level EL students, and I plan on reading the book with both of my classes. Some of my students are refugees, many are not. Thank you for sharing your resources on your teaching, especially with this novel. I would love a copy of your graphic organizer to follow each character’s story and any other ideas or approaches you have for teaching this book. The website Tales2Go now includes Refugee as one of their audiobooks. 3 professional actors read each characters’ story out loud, and the website breaks up the book into parts (based on time segments. I strongly recommend it.
Yvette, thanks for your comment! If you give me your email address I would be happy to share my graphic organizer and and additional suggestions. Thank you for your tips about the audio book!
I would also love this resource!
Hi! I’m trying to access the resources for teaching Refugee, but I don’t get a page with active links. Is this something on my end, or have you changed access?
I’m sorry! I will double check the permissions! I think the link is broken.
Thank you for the great suggestions. I am going to use this book with my 7/8 intermediate EL class.
Here is another resource I found.
https://www.scholastic.com/content/dam/teachers/lesson-plans/17-18/Refugee-discussion-guide.pdf