First night of class

Things seemed to go pretty well last night. Lots of repetition. Some pronunciation issues. We worked on names, the alphabet, numbers (thru 20), we did a jazz chant I wrote (what's your name). All of this same information was in the first chapter of the book. We referred to the book by the end of class. Thus, by the time we got to the end of the book, everything was very familiar. I think that part of it went well.

One thing that sticks out for me happened as I was going through the syllabus and the ground rules for the class. After I had told the students that attendance was mandatory and that they would be dropped if they missed more than 4 classes, I asked for questions. A student looked at her neighbor, then looked at me. "No entendia nada." (I didn't understand anything.) We did go through some class instruction words later, but the critical incident to me here is that classroom guidelines or basic instructions are critical (attendance rules, sign-in routine, etc), but how does one handle this when students lack much of the basic language necessary to understand these instructions without resorting to students L1?  (For the record, my class includes students with different L1s.)