ELL Superhero

This week I am introducing my ELL Superhero: Pepe the Kid! Pepe is a mask-and-cape-wearing, forest-loving, dog-friendly multilingual child meant to inspire ELLs and help them feel like they are not alone in their struggles with English in the classroom. Here is Pepe the Kid!

Pepe is from El Salvadore and speaks Spanish as well as English. Pepe's superpower is the ability to fly around the classroom to help ELLs with their STEM projects - he is full of ideas (and scientific thinking prompts) related to the assignment at hand! When it comes to making sense of our natural world and putting ideas into words, Pepe is your kid!

I am not currently in a classroom (virtual or otherwise) but I envision having Pepe as a part of my third / fourth grade STEM classroom for ELL support. By having an avatar whom students can envision as themselves:

1. they may feel more comfortable accessing their background knowledge and applying to the problem at hand
2. they may feel more comfortable using translanguaging as a tool to demonstrate knowledge
3. they may more readily utilize the scientific thinking prompts when discussing their observations (e.g. I observed ______; When ______ happened, I noticed ______ also happened; I predict ______)
4. they may better relate to participating in the scientific method:

• Making initial observations,
• Coming up with a question of interest based on the observations
• Developing a hypothesis or prediction to go along with the question
• Experimenting and testing
• Gathering and recording results of tests and experiments and drawing conclusions
• Sharing and discussing results