EAL Students in a Mainstream Class

I had a student in my class who was a part of the language centre and was a very new arrival to Australia. His English was extremely limited, and that is where I am faced with the challenge. How do you incorporate students with limited English into a mainstream class? If they've had the same amount of schooling in their native language, than they should be able to work at the same level as the other students who are native English speakers. 

Lucky for me, I have an Education Support staff that speaks/read/writes Turkish which is the language that this student spoke. She was so helpful and handy to have and we tried to ensure that he was doing the same/or very similar activities as the rest of the class. Although you want EAL students to learn English, it is still important that you use the native language in the beginning stages of English language acquisition.

For a deconstruction activity, my ES translated the writing into Turkish. Then, in working with the student, they wrote out each part of the deconstruction in Turkish and next translated it in English. This way, the student could understand each part of the information report and also know what that part was called in English.

Another example of this was in our integrated unit on the Olympics. The student completed a KWL chart, just like everyone else, but began in his language and then translated the words he knew into English with assistance.