Carmen moved with her family from Mexico to the United States. She is an ELL student at her school and is struggling to learn English. She finds herself bonding with Ms. Coski, who has very limited Spanish, yet finds a way to understand and communicate with Carmen. This story takes a pretty fantastic turn when Ms. Coski has Carmen teach the class Spanish, and the class teaches her English. In the end, Carmen is comfortable with English. She plans on teaching her little sister everything she knows. That way she won't have such a hard time at school next year. This story portrays the difficulties ELL students deal with at school. It reminded me of all my kiddos, who shared the same struggles as Carmen. As a teacher, it is so important to keep these kids from getting discouraged. We are their support system and cheerleaders in a classroom, and they need to know that. That is how they have a chance to succeed. ( )

Carmen Learns English is a story many ELL students can relate to. Carmen is stepping into the classroom and learning English as she goes. She takes this knowledge and teaches her younger sister at home, so she will be prepared. I liked reading this book because Carmen goes through quite a transformation. She starts off shy, but eventually gains confidence and finds her voice. I think this book could be used for models of writing because Carmen is learning how to translate typical school worlds to English (bathroom, bus). This book could be a tool for other ELL students and will also give them hope. They too will one day learn English like Carmen! ( )

Carmen, a Spanish speaking child, is trying to navigate her new English speaking school. Even though she struggles, she still learns how to find her way each day. ( )

Like many immigrants, Carmen must learn English. She is beginning school and is understandably nervous that the other kids will not accept her. Comically, Carmen thinks her teacher's Spanish is terrible but she realizes that her teacher cannot very well make fun of her attempts at English if her Spanish is so bad. (Maybe this was on purpose, maybe not...)
This book would also help prepare a class for or introduce an English language learner to the rest of the class. ( )

This book is about Carmen who recently moves to the United states and only speaks Spanish. She is bullied in her class and starts to try to learn english. Once she catches on she communicates better with her classmates and even teaches them a little bit of Spanish!

This is an awesome book for multicultural classrooms. It shows that you can overcome a language barrier and teaches others to be patient with english language learners!