Most students would moan about homework over Thanksgiving break, but Xenia Martinez’s third-graders at Little Village Academy looked awestruck when she described their upcoming assignment: writing nonfiction like the books they’d been reading in class. It would be a big task for her students, who are in a bilingual class for students speaking English as a second language. To give those students a leg up, Little Village Academy partnered with Children’s Literacy Initiative, a national nonprofit that equips teachers with tools and training to give children from low-income neighborhoods top-notch instruction in reading and writing.
