ESL Middle School

Instructor: Mr. Barry

Welcome to the Winthrop Middle School ESL Education web page!

As the ESL teacher, my goal is to provide English language support to each student whose first language is not English. As each student begins learning and using English each day, I’ll be working with them to improve their social and academic language development in English.  In other words, each student will be working to develop and use everyday vocabulary in casual conversation as well as build on their linguistic skills to accurately use content vocabulary in ELA, Social Studies, Math and Science. The main idea of ESL instruction aside from direct language aquisition and learning is to make the curriculum accessible to ALL English learners (ELs) so that they will be able to share and acquire the same knowledge base and content as fluent English speakers while simultaneously increasing their proficiency in English. Eventually, throughout your child’s time in school in the years to come, he or she will become FLUENT in English. Here at the Middle School, I’ll be working directly with your child’s classroom teachers to help accomplish the above goals from sixth grade through eighth grade.

I invite you to contact me via email or through a written letter with ANY questions or concerns. My email is pbarry@winthrop.k12.ma.us.  I’ll be updating this webpage periodically throughout the year, providing useful links to websites and documents about ESL instruction and acquiring a second language. Through these documents and websites, you'll be able to get helpful tips on what you can do at home to help your child improve his or her reading and speaking skills in your home language as well as in English. Also, some translations (when available) will be provided for specific documents.

Overall, we at the Winthrop Middle School would like to maximize communication with all our parents, so please use this web page to help you feel more connected to the school and to your child’s learning. You play an extremely important role in your child’s education, so let’s become more connected so we can truly see how brightly your child can shine.  A second language is not a burden; it is a great advantage which will help your child become more successful in the future.  Together we can work to ensure a brighter future for your kids.