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Paramount : Immigrant English Skills

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Plays, stories and field trips will replace textbooks when 160 elementary school students with limited English skills begin summer school June 30.

The six-week session at Theodore Roosevelt School in Paramount will be financed with a $55,000 federal Emergency Immigrant Education grant.

A program coordinator, five teachers and 10 instructional aides, the majority of them Spanish-speaking, have been hired for the project, said Silvina Rubinstein, bilingual specialist for the Paramount Unified School District.

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Bus transportation from the students’ regular school sites will also be provided.

The students, who were selected by teachers during the regular school year, are all foreign-born and have been in the country for less than three years, Rubinstein said.

“The traditional textbooks will not be used. The students will write plays and stories in their primary languages. Those who can’t write will dictate to the teachers,” Rubinstein said.

“Studies have indicated that students who are taught their primary language while they learn English, develop English skills faster,” she said.

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