Well I began backwards on accident. I went to http://eltiempo.terra.cl/ thinking that I would find a news article from Chili in Spanish. What I found was the home page of the online news. The title, "el tiempo" sounded like "The Times" to me. One reason I was able to understand this was from the text structure. Even online, it looked like a news source. There were titles in bold of different sections with bullet points and the layout made room for many different subjects. The page contained pictures in which I recognized weather, seasons, the moon, maps, and other photos. I also recognized numbers, and though the temperature seemed to be measured in Celsius, and I have since forgotten how to convert it to Fahrenheit, I could at least infer that it was about weather.
This page was difficult to understand as I don't know much Spanish but I could understand more than I did then when I clicked on a link that sent me to what I thought would be an article. I still don't know what it was but it wasn't very long and at the bottom it contained boxes to type in "Nome, email, and site" I'm guessing it was some type of submission form.
Although I really don't have any idea what this web-page said in words. The text structure, pictures and numbers helped me to at least catch the clue that it was a newspaper. These elements- text structure, pictures and numbers are, for the most part, universal. Students need to be able to understand these features and how they can aid in comprehension, no matter the language. In fact, it would be most beneficial if students understood these and used them as cues in their home language then, they could relate their prior knowledge to learning a new language.
I think that the cues that you utilized are the same cues that we need to teach to our ELs. For each of my writing units we spend a couple weeks reading different texts that are in that genre and making a list of "must haves". I think that this strategy is similar to what you suggested in your last paragraph. How do you introduce new writing structures to your high school students?
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