Ralph

Ralph is 6 years old, and was born in Indiana. He is a kindergarten student at an urban elementary school in a large Midwest city. His family came to the U.S. from Mexico 12 years ago. He has two older brothers, one who is 11 and is in 5th grade at the same school, and one who is 20 years old and is a student at a community college.

His parents attended high school in Mexico City. His father works in construction and can speak some English and his mother stays home to care for the family. Spanish is the dominant language of the home, though Ralph prefers to speak English while his older brothers speak both Spanish and English at home. Ralph loves school and especially enjoys reading and working on the computers and tablets in the classroom.

At school Ralph receives sheltered English content-area instruction in his classroom and receives 30 minutes of daily ESL instruction through a pull-out program with a certified ESL teacher. His classroom teacher has also recently completed licensure in working with ELL students. Ralph’s official English language proficiency level is 2 (WIDA).

At home Ralph loves to spend time with his older brothers playing video games on their Playstation 3 and surfing the Internet.  His Mom will often turn off the Internet to get the kids off their computers and devices, but Ralph has figured out how to turn it back on so he can play Minecraft and watch his favorite YouTube videos.