Enhancing English Literacy Skills

2. Discuss some ways that you can use your art to enhance students acquiring English literacy skills.
Drawing on students' background knowledge and experiences, can be an effective way to bridge gaps and to make the content more accessible.
1. Learn about your students' backgrounds and find culturally relevant resources to teach content.
You can find ways for your students to contribute their own cultural experience in the classroom. This may mean asking students to show how a topic connects to their lives or to give an example of a particular idea as they would experience it in their native country. Students can bring music or art from their culture and describe its significance and meaning to their classmates. Students can also interview their parents in order to learn more about their memories and experience. These strategies will work in mainstream classes as well. For example, if U.S. students are studying civil rights in the 1960's, they may remember information better if they relate it to historical and cultural information shared by family members.

2. Look for resources that go beyond the textbook
Try to find materials that will engage students and involve them in the learning process so that they find elements they can connect to and learn from. These may include:

Art
There are many ways to bring educational content to life through art, and to use art as a starting point for discussing different cultural traditions. Using artwork that depicts day-to-day events and celebrations can also be a provocative starting point for a discussion about the similarities and differences between other cultures, and a way of affirming the students' daily lives, traditions, and lifestyles in the classroom.
Music
Students are a great resource for sharing music, and older students especially like to share music, discuss the meaning, and connect it to content. If the song is in a language some students do not understand, ask the student to translate it and discuss the meaning. Songs from other countries often describe political events or re-tell folk stories in poetic form.
3. Use literature, stories, and folktales from other cultures as a way of encouraging students to connect what they are reading to their own experiences, and Use storytelling in the classroom.
Many cultures have a rich tradition of storytelling that often gets lost in the U.S. with the focus on developing literacy skills. Many of the common stories in cultures have been translated and written in story form, but children also enjoy telling and acting out stories.
In the end, the efforts that teachers make to add a rich, cultural dimension to the curriculum will enhance student learning and comprehension, and create excitement in the classroom.