ELL Writing Workshop Celebrates Publishing Historical Fiction Harmonica Books: A Collaborative Project with Library Media Center, Art and ELL


By Dr. Christine Cipriani Wilson

  As we look back at the past, there are many landmark moments in global history.  English Language Learners (ELL) at Walworth Barbour American International School are particularly suited to sit in a historical time machine, pulling a few levers to dive into the past across different parts of the world due to their intimate connection of historical moments in time across the globe. The historical fiction writing project that brought together teachers from Library and Media Center,  Art, and ELL at WBAIS resulted in a set of 14 beautiful books which will be on display in the WBAIS Library for the month of March.

  Historical Fiction, is a genre of reading and writing that allowed High School students in the ELL Reading and Writing Workshop to dip into various stories that were set in a time and place in the past reflecting the languages, cultures, and  countries that represent the student community at WBAIS. These stories brought together secondary source research from the library database as well as primary source information through family interviews.

  By interviewing parents or grandparents to understand better a historical event that happened in their time and home country, our ELL students were able to create compelling stories with the key elements of historical fiction. The storytelling elements included plot, conflict, theme, setting, character, dialogue, and, most importantly, “world building” which is defined in the the article, “Seven Elements of Historical Fiction” as “the customs, social arrangements, family environment, governments, religious structures, international alliances, military actions, physical geography, layouts of towns and cities, and politics of the time…” (Tod, 2015)

       Source:  Tod, 2015

This unit of study began with a writing workshop guided by Marissa Moss, a published children’s author sponsored by WBAIS Library Media Center. Ms. Moss taught ELL students about the importance of primary source information through the interview process for rich historical fiction writing.  She gave examples from her own books to include Caravaggio: Painter on the Run and  Mira’s Diary: California Dreaming and Bombs over London.  

Marissa Moss, WBAIS Library Guest Author, January 2018 with ELL students learning about interviews

ELL students began interviewing family members often in their mother tongue in order to better understand the historical events which were part of their own history.  Students interviewed parents and grandparents in French, German, Portuguese, Lithuanian, Korean, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Ukrainian, and Czech as well as in English.

         Emma Khan with her family

Their interviews uncovered family stories that had never been discussed in such detail: the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster, 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Angolan Civil War in 1975, World War II from the perspective of a Russian Child, German resistance to Nazism, the 1939 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the Korean 1988 Olympics, Life under the Greek Dictator Papadopoulos in 1967, a Palestinian story of resettlement from Mothalath to Jaffa, and a Lithuanian fourteen year old girl who traveled over 2000 km to safety during the Soviet occupation of Lithuania.  

ELL students reviewed their family timeline, interviewed a member of the family on a particular event from the past, and then told a short story covering a specific historical event with one setting. The criteria for the stories were to:

  1. tell the story using the 7 critical elements of historical writing,
  2. portray characters realistically as they were described from the family interviews, and
  3. describe a setting that is authentic through historical facts skillfully woven throughout the text.

Guiding ELL students on keyword searches for historical events using WBAIS Library Secondary School Resources enabled ELL students the chance to find valid sources expected of them in other classes such as I-Search and Senior Project. Ms. Brodsky, our library integrationist, showed ELL students how to find articles that met student’s reading levels as well as providing ample background information for the the setting of their historical fiction stories. The more interesting facts they found about the countries and events that their family talked about, the richer and more authentic their stories became.  

  Questions that were posed to students as they were researching settings for their story included: What kind of clothes did people wear during the time period?

How did the people speak to one another? What were their surroundings like? What were the religious practices, traditions, and primary occupations?

   ELL students added secondary research notes to their family interviews and then completed a historical fiction

graphic organizer to build their story. Guiding questions were provided to include:

  • What major event happened in your novel that you are reporting?
  • Why did this event happen (or why do you think it happened)?
  • How did this event happen? (give details on the sequence of events)
  • What makes this novel historical fiction?  (Explain what elements in your story qualifies this as historical fiction.)
  • What makes the event you have chosen to write about “important” in your opinion?
  • In your novel, what other events happened as a result of this event?  
  • If nothing else happened in your novel as a result of this event, predict what you think could have happened.

The unit was divided into seven tasks.  The first task was the family interview. ELL students developed 15-20 questions to coax a family member’s story about one event that had happened in a specific time and place, taking care not to ask generic questions about their life.  The second task was researching a historical event tied to the family history. ELL students wrote a

description of the setting, describing in as detailed a way as possible the physical and social setting of the story such as location, clothing, jobs, and social events of that time. Task Three involved the development of the historical characters.  This element that distinguish historical fiction from other stories is that it may include actual historical figures as characters. Task 4 involved completing a Historical Fiction Graphic Organizer which tied in all seven elements of the historical fiction story. In Task 5, students practiced the writing workshop model of peer and teacher editing to create a final draft using editing symbols and oral feedback for correcting common errors in their writing. Minilessons on using dialogue effectively and weaving in paraphrased research information of the historical events helped students tell authentic stories. Task 6 involved publishing their story in a 3-dimensional format.  

With Art teacher, Ms. Pierson, ELL students were guided on the art of bookmaking.  ELL students created harmonica books where they included images, drawings, photos and mother tongue translations to their books.  Book dedications were added in English and mother tongue to family members whose stories had been told.

 Ms. Pierson shows Tehillah Naor bookmaking skills

A publication celebration brought out the most important part of this unit–sharing stories to an audience beyond the classroom walls.  ELL historical fiction stories that were shared highlighted a new kind of narrative that represented a broad range of cultures and languages written to entertain, educate, engage in cultural preservation, and ultimately instill moral values to their audience.

  Shady Gara’s Mothalath was read to a

7th Grade Peace Studies Class, where he was able to share insights of a multigenerational Palestinian Israeli story of peace and hope. The book generated deep conversations from both Arab and Jewish perspectives about peace in the Middle East and about the Palestinian Israeli identity.

Shady Gara, with 7th Grade Peace Studies Elective students,  after reading his historical fiction novel about his Palestinian grandfather and the double-identity  of being Palestinian Israeli.

Other ELL students who read their stories reflected that by writing these historical fiction novels and sharing them with others, family stories came to life that they had not known about. Family members who could not read in  English, were able to read the mother tongue translations that were printed on the other side of the harmonica book. Stories shared, passed down to another generation, and shared again has shown that telling a story from the past brings it back to life again to never be forgotten.

Harmonica Book format allows the book to be a 3-dimensional object to be viewed from multiple vantage points which highlights the multiple perspectives of the story

Ukrainian translation of Alex Shoiket’s Chernobyl

Why Maintaining a Family’s Mother Tongue is Important

By: Dr. Christine Cipriani Wilson


Living in a Minority Language. Every bilingual has a story to tell growing up in two languages.  As a child growing up in New Jersey, my non-English speaking mother was communicating in her mother tongue, Italian, the only language she knew at the time, while my father was speaking to his five children in broken English, as he was also quickly learning English for work purposes.  He did not want us using Italian at home because in 1950’s America, an Italian immigrant wanted to integrate as quickly as possible, and identifying with any other culture other than American was not a wise choice. He also was under the misconception that speaking only in English would improve our academic language at school.

Nonetheless, thanks to my mother, I continued to speak to her in Italian at home, and was fortunate enough to pass down this “mother tongue” (also known as “heritage language”) to my children.  Every summer we go to Italy to ensure the kind of language immersion that over the course of 18 years resulted in a bilingualism that has benefitted our family on many levels. My daughter, Renata, after scoring a 5 on the AP Italian exam, is now a teacher assistant in Italian at College of William and Mary in Virginia, and she is now gaining working proficiency in her third language, Arabic, through an intensive summer language immersion program.    She now converses with her father in Arabic, who, as a US Diplomat, has worked using his Arabic in a number of countries to include, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. As a family we have recognized the importance of learning other languages, and the mother tongue that my family gave me as a gift was a stepping stone to accessing other living languages and cultures that surround us.

Mother Tongue and International Literacy Days. UNESCO created an International Mother Language Day in 1999 (February 21) to promote cultural diversity and multilingualism internationally long after  the concept of “subtractive bilingualism” (Lambert, 1981) was already a well known and growing phenomenon. This notion describes the many immigrants globally who lose their native language proficiency while they are becoming linguistically assimilated into English-speaking societies.  The phenomenon is a familiar one in the United States- like the story I described in my own family. Of the eleven grandchildren of my parents, only my two children maintained the mother tongue that my parents came with to the US.

Today, the assimilation process seems to be taking place more rapidly, even at international schools where one would think a more globally-minded community would support language learning.  The reality is that in many schools around the world, native children lose their ethnic languages in the process of becoming linguistically and culturally assimilated into the dominant language of school and society, resulting in monolingualism by graduation, even if this mother tongue is the only language a student speaks when first entering school.

A Communication Goal for the 21st Century. Working at an international school in Israel, I focused on an accreditation Communication Goal of helping students becoming better global communicators.  In the school’s Modern Language Department languages in French, Spanish, and Hebrew were being learned as a foreign language.  The school community was pushed to think about the importance of language learning and how critical it is to maintain a mother tongue while learning new languages. Learning or maintaining a language is important because of personal, social, intellectual, and economic reasons as well.  Strengthening cultural and family ties is part of what happens when a family speaks in a mother tongue.

Mother Tongue Research. As an educator I encourage parents to keep the first language present in home life to ingrain in the child the notion of taking pride in the roots of the family, preserving the cultural and linguistic connections to the home country while at the same time supporting the child to build academic skills in the language of school.  The child growing up in a mother tongue strengthens ties with family members and deepens the values of social interactions. The result is that links to family members are maintained. In addition, encouraging children to use their mother tongue prepares them to interact with a larger native-language community.

Research has shown that parents who communicate in a mother tongue can convey values and beliefs in coping with experiences of growing up.  With this home language, parents can influence their children, building intimacy through shared beliefs and understandings that could not be communicated as effectively in a second language.

Another reason that maintaining mother tongue is so important to our multilingual children is the need to strengthen intellectual development.  Language learners need continuous intellectual development, and those who are not yet fluent in English end up speaking only in English at a lower intellectual level.  Over time, this slows their overall cognitive development. However, when a school community acknowledges and builds on the resources that students come to school with, such as their mother tongue, multilingual students begin working at their actual level of intellectual maturity which improves cognitive development.

Research shows that children whose language proficiency in their mother tongue for speaking, listening, reading and writing is at a native level, then their second language readiness is much better.  In early stages, reading in the first language can greatly accelerate the development of reading in the second language. Strong first-language skills translate to strong second-language skills.

Finally, there are many families at international schools who plan to return to their home country in the future.  Remaining fluent in a home language is therefore important for university studies, better employment, in addition to being able to communicate with colleagues and their community members when they return.  Maintaining native-language proficiency while having English can equate to a job as a translator, interpreter, teacher, or work for international companies and the government.

Mother Tongue Programs.  IMother tongue programs honor the many different languages students bring to school.   The Mother Tongue Program at the international schools inn both UK and Israel sought to develop effective multilingual communicators with a global outlook. The mission was to nurture multilingual students to be responsible citizens who are proud of their heritage language and culture.

By offering a rich variety of activities that focus on English Language Arts standards such as the Common Core Standards, Mother Tongue Programs can focus on language objectives that both focus on learning in the four domains of listening, speaking, reading, and writing in the language of school, English, as well as the heritage language.

An important part of mother tongue language learning experience is imparting language and communication skills building upon existing language systems within the students’ mother tongue. By developing both languages- English and mother tongue- the school develops a more equitable place that acknowledges the cultures and languages of its students.

The Mother Tongue activities developed over the years have included Mother Tongue Lunch Clubs where students socialize and eat together in mother tongue groups, Language Ambassadors that help newcomers of English integrate into the school by having a student mentor.  After School Activities provide a K-12 mother tongue language support that can result in an AP Exam that allows graduating students to earn credit for their knowledge of an additional language.

A mother tongue program depends on language mentor volunteers who have a language to share. Sign ups for language mentor volunteers have been advertised at  PTA meetings, divisional student assemblies, and school boards. Students who want to be a language mentor can earn community service credit while parents are viewed as language experts instead of outsiders.  The focus begins at the elementary level to ensure mother tongue maintenance. At the high school level, it can focus on reading and writing skills for academic purposes. Mother tongue activities will range from arts and crafts, to national day celebrations, to book talks in mother tongue.

In addition, mother tongue programs help bolster English Language Learning programs. After school activities can be tied to curricular work throughout the school year to include International Literacy Days, Mother Tongue book swaps, and International Movie Nights.

According to  Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, engaging in multilingual activities build stronger brains and better citizens of the world.  Here are just a few reasons why we should support mother tongue activities at WBAIS:

  1. Multilinguals deal with levels of abstraction earlier than monolinguals.
  2. Multilinguals have more flexible minds.
  3. Multilinguals learn how to inhibit previously learned skills sets.
  4. Multilinguals use more of their brains than monolinguals.
  5. Multilinguals are more creative than monolinguals in thirty out of thirty-three studies.
  6. Multilinguals have transferable cognitive benefits
  7. Multilinguals are superior at cultural integration
  8. Multilinguals have enhanced intellectual empathy

Understanding that language is a gift that all schools need to nurture. Today, educators can be committed to working with students to build on the language resources they bring to school while at the same time teaching them the language of school.

Arabic for English: Two Schools Collaborate on Language

                                                     Amani Jaber-Awida and Christine Cipriani Wilson

Amani Awida, as a former student of Walworth Barbour American International School (WBAIS), had always dreamed to go back to the place that changed her life. Experiencing and living the dream of being part of the international community made her, a native Arabic speaker,  who she is today: a person believing in the genuinity of coexistence with the other side, respecting differences, and enjoying the privilege of exposure to multiculturalism. Being fortunate to be a high schooler at WBAIS, she wished other students from her hometown, Taibeh, Israel would get the chance to experience the enrichment of being part of an international community that included over 50 nationalities. Since she deeply believe in the meaning of her name ‘Amani’, “wishes”, she was so eager to make this wish come true.

The idea of exchanging language skills began after Amani’s proposal to WBAIS Superintendent,  Mike Downs; High School Principal, Mr. Neal Jacover; and Dr. Christine Cipriani Wilson, Mother Tongue Program Coordinator. The meeting was so fruitful, that soon the proposal turned into an actual working collaboration between the two schools, Alnajah Atid  High School of Sciences in Taibeh and WBAIS in Evan Yehuda. Both schools provided a language expertise: Alnajah Atid High School provided Arabic Language Mentors for the Arabic language class at WBAIS while WBAIS provided English as an Additional Language Teacher for their EAL students.  The Mother Tongue Program now celebrates its third group of Taibeh students who are bused to the WBAIS campus with continued support and enthusiasm from WBAIS.

First steps at the collaborative model began with Alnajah Atid  High School of Sciences hosting a visit from Mr. Downs and Christine in Taibeh in the Spring of 2018. They met 15 students who were chosen to take part in the pilot of the Mother Tongue program as well as the Mayor of Taibeh.

The Mother Tongue Program at WBAIS is unique in that the language groups that have been formed in the past two years model language objectives from the English Language Arts Common Core Standards K-12 as a starting point.  These standards in English are flipped for Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and the newly formed French Mother Tongue. The lesson plans are varied and rich in content which is suitable to students from different cultural backgrounds. They practice all domains of language from speaking, listening, reading, to academic writing skills  enriching students’ mother tongues in a variety of languages. Those that are able, are guided to take the AP or AP Prototype (NEWL) to get credit for their additional language.

The outcome for the Arabic and English classes and the collaboration between the two schools not only focused on language development, but also provided a social connection that enriched both groups of students.  Arab students coming from Taibeh have shared their experiences in school and outside of school with our Arab students at WBAIS in Israel. Such exchanges have been invaluable for both groups of students. Activities have included debates, creative writing, story telling and listening.