Best Practices for Language Learners: Guest Blogging

I am honored to be a guest blogger for Krista over at Second Grade Superkids and am in great company.  Be sure to visit her blog and read the posts from this past week to learn about excellent "best practices" for language learners!

Querida Sra. Grover: Reading Dialogue Journals

For my Masters thesis, I chose to study the use of dialogue journals with my second grade bilingual students.  Over the course of 90 days, I analyzed and charted features included in my students' responses to their reading during self-selected reading time.  Our typical reading workshop routine was a 10-20 minute minilesson and then students would have self-selected reading for 30 minutes.  During this time, I pulled small groups for guided reading.  At the 30 minute mark, I would ring a bell and students would grab their dialogue journals and have 10-15 minutes to write me  letter about what they were reading.  I tried to encourage them to show me evidence of the strategies that we were learning during the minilessons.

These are some examples of the journals when we first started in October.




























































































My journals were never as fabulous as those you see in Fountas and Pinnell's Guiding Readers and Writers (I LOVE that book!) but I did learn so much about my students from them.  I promised that I would write back at least once a week.

What I learned from the quantitative part of my study was that the students that were most impacted by these journals were my middle guys.  Not the highest students.  Not the struggling ones.  It was the middle ones that are often neglected or overlooked.  These were the ones that showed the most improvement over the course of the study.

These examples were from 2005 and I have learned a lot since then.  In the future, I would definitely include language frames to help students understand the differences in types of language used when describing characters versus summarizing, etc.

Dialogue journals will forever be a part of my classroom practice.  They are windows to the souls of my little readers.  So...as you think of what to do with all of those spiral notebooks that will be heading your way in two months, maybe you will want to reserve one of them for a reading dialogue journal!

Para escribir poesía...

I love this poemita by Francisco X. Alarcón.  Poetry seems to be making a comeback in priority in the classroom probably due to its resurgence on standardized tests.  As this poem indicates, those lessons on the five senses from the early grades will provide the foundation for students to be able to write poetry in the upper grades.

What way have you found to help your students touch, smell, and taste words?

De regreso a la escuela: Marisol McDonald no combina

From the bookjacket:
Marisol McDonald has flaming red hair and nut-brown skin.  Polka dots and stripes are her favorite combination.  She prefers peanut butter and jelly burritos in her lunch box.  To Marisol, these seemingly mismatched things make perfect sense together.

Other people wrinkle their nose in confusion at Marisol -- can't she just choose one or the other?  Try as she might, in a world where everyone tries to put this biracial, Peruvian-Scottish-American girl into a box.  Marisol McDonald doesn't match.  And that's just fine with her.

A mestiza Peruvian American of European, Jewish, and Amerindian heritage, renowned author Monica Brown wrote this lively story to bring her own experience of being mismatched to life.

I have visited hundred of bilingual classrooms and practically every one of them has at least one student who could identify with Marisol McDonald.  Whether it's his name or her hair color, they just don't look or sound like the rest of the peers assigned to the class. 

Being a part of a bilingual program typically means that students will spend several years with the same peers unlike the monolingual students who are shifted around each year.  This can be a wonderful thing as they build deeper friendships and trust and know each others' strengths and challenges.  It can also be difficult because certain expectations can be unintentionally established that a "bilingual student" will always have certain characteristics.

I picked this bilingual book Marisol McDonald Doesn't Match/Marisol McDonald no combina as another book for my DE REGRESO A LA ESCUELA series because it is a good way to foster conversation from the very beginning of the year.  A typical beginning of school activity is to have students create Venn Diagrams or Double-Bubble Maps comparing and contrasting themselves with a partner in the class.  It is healthy for our students to begin to process these ideas even at a young age as they appreciate the diversity within and outside their classroom. 

I would say this book is best targeted for first or second grades but could easily be stretched higher or lower!

Let's Tell the Public the Truth about Bilingual Education!

We want YOU!

I completed my student teaching in a first grade bilingual classroom in the fall of 1998 and graduated from college in the spring of 1999.  While I occasionally heard about Proposition 227 that was passed in June of 1998, California seemed a long way away from my college in Illinois and my home in Texas.  I didn't know that I was choosing a controversial career.  I wasn't trying to pick a fight.  I just knew that being a bilingual teacher was the most enjoyable, exciting, and meaningful thing I had ever done.

Stephen Krashen is a favorite researcher/advocate for bilingual education.  He gave this keynote address at the NABE Conference in 2004.  It is titled "Let's Tell the Public the Truth about Bilingual Education".  Responding to the threat of the English-only movement, he says:

Clearly bilingual educators must make greater efforts to communicate with the media and the public in general, to use both traditional means (e.g. letters to the editor, magazine articles) and more recent, innovative means (the internet).  Reporters generally contact official organizations for comments on issues; it is crucial that professional organizations be ready with clear and concise answers to frequently asked questions, and that they respond to all attacks on bilingual education.  Failure to answer an attack is perceived as conceding the point.  When advocates do answer, they can use the space provided as another opportunity to educate the public, whenever possible repeating the core arguments:  Bilingual education is successful in helping children acquire English, and there are good reasons why it is successful.

Bilingual education needs more advocates and "the internet", while no longer considered "recent", is still one of our biggest and best mediums to communicate the awesomeness that is happening in our classrooms.  The teacher bloggy world is HUGE but it is sadly lacking bilingual teacher bloggers.

Would you consider adding your voice?  You don't have to wax on about the virtues of a bilingual education.  You just need to take pictures of the work that your students are producing and post them.  Check out the list of bilingual/dual language teacher blogs in the right margin.  I would love to add your name!

A DIBUJAR: Draw-Write-Now Books

If you are new to I Teach Dual Language, you may have missed this post from March about Writing Workshop in the primary bilingual classroom.  The video examples from that post are of an AMAZING Kindergarten teacher in a one-way 50/50 classroom.

The third step in her "Cinco pasos para la escritura" is DIBUJAR and it is such a crucial step.  With primary grade students, the drawing step is really the prewriting/drafting stage of the writing process.  I have been guilty of rushing kids through this step on to the  "more important" writing stage.  Sometimes I think we treat drawing as if kids should already know how to do that when it really has to be taught just as much as the letter formation and writing.

While the written word is as important in today's culture as ever, I believe the ability to create visual images is just as important and often neglected in our daily school routines.  Any teacher training worth your time will tell you that English language learners (and pretty much ALL learners) need us to provide them nonlinguistic images  and they need to create their own images.  BUT drawing and creating a visual presentation of something can be really hard and intimidating!

Enter some of my new favorite books!  Have you seen this Draw-Write-Now series?


The author of these books was a second grade teacher who wanted to improve her students' handwriting, pencil control, drawing ability, and observational skills.  The books focus on all sorts of different themes and scenes and they simplify drawing into simple steps and shapes like in the example below.


I checked one of these books out from the library and have been working through it with my four year old.  She is loving it and we are both learning how to draw better!

These books have been around for awhile so you can probably find them on eBay or at Half-Price Books (if you live in Dallas, you had better leave some at the store for me!!!).  As teachers of ELLs, I think these could be a really helpful tool for explicitly teaching our students how to draw/sketch images before writing.

Have any of you used these before or do you have another tool for helping your students become better at conveying meaning through their drawings?

De regreso a la escuela: Luna, Lunita, Lunera

PreK and Kindergarten teachers, have you met this sweet book by Jorge Argueta yet? 

Mañana voy a la escuelita

por primera vez

El corazón me salta

como una ranita.


Little Luna, Lunita, Lunera is quite nervous about going to school for the first time. 

Como tengo cinco años

y soy grande como la luna llena

me pongo

los calcetines blancos,

los tenis rojos,

la blusa azul

y unos pantalones verdes

yo solita.

Y nos vamos a la escuela.

Little Lunita gradually discovers that school is not so scary as she gets to know her teacher and new friends in her class.  And contrary to her previous belief, she realizes that there are actually no scary monsters at school.  At home that night with her parents, she is even excited to go back the next day.

PreK and Kindergarten teachers, I have such admiration for what you do, especially those first few weeks of school!   I hope you can enjoy this sweet book with your little Lunas!

I like to move it, move it!: Using music for transitions

My husband took my girls to see Madagascar 3 last weekend and they have been singing "I like to move it, move it!" ever since!  

 

One of the hardest parts of being a bilingual/dual-language teacher is keeping the schedule moving because there is just not a minute to waste.  Am I the only one who ever considered other purposes for the cafeteria spork when hearing a monolingual teacher complain in the teachers' lounge that there is just not enough time? :)

A classroom video from Debbie Miller (Reading with Meaning) gave me the idea to use music to cue my students about transitions throughout our day.  Here are some of the songs that I had on my classroom transitions CD:

• "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong - Put morning work away and come to the floor by Calendar
• "Put Your Happy Face On" by The Coles - Leave Calendar board and get pencils and problem solving journals out
• "Zip a dee doo dah" - Clean up math games, get dry erase board, marker, and sock and go sit in front of Word Walls
• "Do the Moo Shoo" by The Veggie Tales - Arrive back to class from PE with just 10 minutes before we had to leave again for lunch.  We usually worked on handwriting at this time so this silly song was just long enough to get to our seats and get supplies out.
• "New World Coming" by Mama Cass Elliot - Back to class from lunch and recess, this song was the cue to sit at the rug with buddy for reading mini-lesson.
• "Up, Up, Up!" by 2Play - Get reading dialogue journal and books from book box and find a place to read independently or with a partner.
• "Hey Now You're a Rockstar" by Smash Mouth (Shrek version) - Put journals and books away and come to reading circle before beginning Writing Workshop.
• "I Can Be Your Friend" by The Veggie Tales - Come back to circle to debrief from Writing Workshop.
• "This Land is Your Land" by Woodie Guthrie - Get ready for Science or Social Studies.

There was one more song on a different CD that was our end-of-day song to get backpacks ready to go home, put chairs up, pick up trash, and get in line.  I can't remember what it was but it was my students' least favorite song.  Maybe because they were just so sad to leave! Ha! 

This is such a random and old list of songs that I am NOT recommending you use these specific ones BUT you may want to spend the summer finding some songs you and your kids would enjoy hearing every day.  I found that the predictability of the songs really helped my severely ADHD student.  Before, I would nag him to follow directions and get where he was supposed to be.  With the songs, he knew exactly how much time he had and he would roll in right at the last second...which was just fine with me!  

The songs are also helpful for newcomers and kids with limited language on either Spanish or English days.  They can use the music as their cue for what to do instead of just relying on the teacher's instructions.

More than anything, it just made our classroom a more fun place to be.  It's hard to be grumpy when there is music playing!  Have you found a way to incorporate music into your daily routine?

An Open Letter to the Dual Language School Librarian

An Open Letter to the Elementary School Librarian:

A former principal used to say that the library was the heart of our school.  Thank you for all you do to keep our heart pumping! 

Libraries have been one of my favorite places to be as long as I can remember and I have benefitted from wonderful librarians as a student and as a teacher.  One of the best things about libraries is that they are comfortable, predictable places.  With some exceptions, libraries are generally the same and their layouts and content have stayed the same for many, many years.

But, here's the thing, the students that your library serves are not exactly the same as they were ten, twenty, or thirty years ago.  Yes, these students still need to learn how to care for books, find books, and develop a loyal following of some favorite authors.  However, it would be helpful if you might consider a few small changes that would make your library continue to be a favorite place of our current and future students:

1. For many of our students, English is not their first language.  While they are all in the process of learning English, reading involves not just the tongue but also the heart.  These children, especially the young ones, need to learn to love reading by encountering lots of books in their heart language. 
2. As you amass more and more native language books, PLEASE do not put them all together on one or two shelves!  Let me give several reasons for this:
1. I know that it might seem like that would make the books easier to locate BUT learning to locate books is one of the skills that our students need to learn in your library.  A good-sized bright sticker indicating the language placed on the spine of the book is all our students need to find native language books amidst the rest of the English books.
2. Part of visiting the library is teaching students to respect the books and respect their fellow library patrons.  When all of the books of one language are placed together and an entire Kindergarten bilingual class converges on that one shelf, it is impossible for them to practice common courtesy and care for books.  Shelving the books according to author or topic allows students to spread out in the library and actually practice using tools like shelf-markers.
3. We do want our children to read books in English too.  When native language books are spread throughout the library and labeled with a sticker, I can point a student in the direction of a shelf of books about his/her favorite topic.  When a boy is looking for books about dinosaurs, he can find books in his native language as well as books in English.  He will quickly learn that reading in two languages will open his world even more because he has access to double the amount of information!
3. Don't let your inability to speak my students' language (if that is indeed the case) stop you from looking them in the eye and talking to them in English.  They loved you before you even said a word!  To them, you are the magical provider of beautiful books!  All of my students are learning English and they need to practice with you.  Connect with them about the books they are reading.  If they seem especially timid, point to the pictures in the books and ask them yes or no questions.  Show them where more books about that topic or by the same author are located.  You are unique to them because you will be a constant through the years while teachers will change.  You are building a relationship that will continue as long as you are both in this school! 
4. Your support of my students' learning does not stop when they walk out the doors of the library.  As I look at my units of study for future weeks, I look to the library for books to build my students' background knowledge and open their minds for future.  I am a dual language teacher and I need resources in both languages to teach these subjects.  I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your efforts to locate quality books in both languages about the authors and topics that we study in our curriculum.  If you ever need help finding those books, I would be happy to look through your catalogs with you!

Everything you do as my campus librarian will impact my students' current learning and desire to continue learning for the rest of their lives.  Thank you for serving me and my students in this way!  We do appreciate you!

Sincerely,
A Dual Language Teacher

De regreso a la escuela: La caja de las carcajadas

La encontré una tarde fría y gris de otoño en una estación de tren. 

Yo estaba sentada en un asiento del andén buscando distraerme un rato.  Trenes saliendo y llegando.  Gente caminando, corriendo apurada, cansada.

Debajo del asiento estaba esta caja que sin querer golpeé con el talón del pie.  Me agaché.  Una caja pintada con colores muy alegres.  “¡Que bonita!” pensé y me estiré para tomarla.

Sorprendida por su peso, la arrastré hacia mí con las dos manos.  Miré a mi alrededor buscando a un posible dueño, pero no había nadie que pareciera serio.  Finalmente, la abrí con bastante dificultad. 

Dentro de la caja había sonrisas, sí, así como lo lees, sonrisas.  Y muchas.

Mis ojos y oídos no pudieron dar crédito a lo que sucedió luego. 

With a title like La caja de las carjadas, this book by Mariana Jäntii captured my attention from the library shelf.  When I sat down to read it, I was in awe of the beatiful word choice and sentence fluency and absolutely loved the story. 


This book is about a girl who discovers a box that contains laughter.  That's right!  As in ¡Je je je!  ¡Ja ja ja!  ¡Ji ji ji!  ¡Jua jua jua!  The laughter is contagious and has the power to change people's attitudes when they hear it (las miradas de mis amigos comenzaron a iluminarse mientras alegres sonrisas se pintaban en sus rostros, transformándolas). 


Telling her story in first person, the girl claims, "Es muy lindo ver cómo sonreír cambia los colores de cualquier alma gris” and later asks the reader, "¿Has probado alguna vez transformarte en una caja de sonrisas para los demás?"
 
I think this book would be a perfect back to school read as you establish your new community of learners and talk about the importance of sharing laughter together.  Of course, you will definitely want to revisit this book throughout the year for many other teaching purposes (word choice, sentence fluency, onomatopeia, and much more!).

I know the start of school is still a long way away but good back to school reads in Spanish can be hard to find so I want to feature as many as possible this summer to allow you the time to gather a few before that first day is here.  Yes, I will admit to being at Borders one year on the night before school started (just before 10 pm) trying to buy a book I just had to read to my students on the first day.  A little crazy?  Yes!  But those first read-alouds with a new class are pretty stinkin' special!

We have a winner!: Spanish Poetry Books Giveaway

We have a winner!  Lucky #7!

According to my very fancy numbering of the comments before using random.org, the seventh comment belongs to Mrs. Castro of Second Grade...Spanglish Style.  Congratulations, Mrs. Castro!  We hope you enjoy these five books with your second graders next year!

Thanks to everyone else that contributed input on the use of authentic Spanish literature in the classroom!  Many thanks to the Warren Instructional Network for sponsoring this giveaway.  If your administrator contacts you this summer because he found some funds for more bilingual resources (it has been known to happen!), tell him to give Kyle a call.  You will love the variety and relevance of the many resources that he represents!

Booksource Spanish Poetry Book Giveaway!

Yippee!  What's better than being on summer break?  Being on summer break AND winning free stuff for your classroom!  The Warren Instructional Network is a representative for some of the best instructional resource providers out there like Heinemann, Booksource, Fountas & Pinnell, Benchmark Education, and Mondo Education Publishing.  Several of these companies provide excellent Spanish language and bilingual resources.

Booksource has collections of Spanish poetry books for the primary grades and the upper elementary grades.  Kyle Warren is offering one lucky I Teach Dual Language reader a five book sampling from both collections!









Here's how to enter for a chance to win:
In their efforts to serve bilingual teachers even better, the Warren Instructional Network would like to know, how important to you is the use of authentic (versus translated) Spanish language materials in your daily literacy instruction?  


Leave a comment below with your answer and you will receive one entry in the drawing.  Want a bonus entry?  "Like" I Teach Dual Language on Facebook and leave a comment here that you did.

Anonymous entries cannot win because that makes announcing the winner very difficult!  The giveaway will close at 8 pm CST on Friday, June 8th and a randomly drawn winner will be announced by 9 pm.   

Talking Rhyme with Dallas ISD

Today, thanks to the Warren Instructional Network, I had the privilege of spending the afternoon with a room full of PK-2 bilingual teachers from Dallas ISD.  As a Dallas resident, I loved getting to meet these teachers and see their passion for improving education for their students.  Our room got a little too full so I promised those that were turned away that I would post some of the resources shared here.

We kicked off our discussion on rhyming by first looking at some quotes from the Introduction to the Spanish Language Arts and Reading TEKS.  Can I just say that these make me so proud to be a Texan?  If you don't believe that these are actually written in our educational law, you can read them yourself right here!

In the interest of vertical team building, check out the importance of rhyming in these SLAR TEKS for grades 3-5 below.  Upper grade teachers, I know you appreciate primary grade teachers that help students develop their ability to distinguish rhyming words AND generate rhymes.  Those abilities will definitely be necessary for analyzing and writing poems!

Check out this Online Spanish Rhyming Dictionary for an excellent resource for creating lists of rhyming words for games and activities.

 Here is a list of some rhyming storybooks for anchoring students' understanding of rhyming:







These are wonderful books full of Spanish poetry for helping students appreciate rhythm and rhyme:







We played two HIGHLY competitive rounds of ¡Basta con las sílabas! where teachers had one minute to generate rhyming words with the endings listed on the game board.  When the timer sounded, participants shared their words with their group.  Every person that had a unique word received a point for his/her word.  If someone else in the group had the same word, neither person received a point.  I loved listening in to the conversations about different words!  This is such a fun, authentic activity for promoting rhyming and vocabulary development!  You can download my game board here for free!

I have previously blogged about the other games and activities that were shared today.  You can view all of ITDL's rhyming posts at this link: http://www.iteachduallanguage.blogspot.com/search/label/rhyming

Thanks again to the DISD teachers for a wonderful afternoon!  Please let me know if there is anything else that I promised you that I have forgotten here.

Stay tuned for a giveaway of a set of five Spanish poetry books from Warren Instructional Network and Booksource.  Details will be posted tomorrow morning!

De nada, empanada: Spanish Rhyming Phrases

Making rhymes and playing with words is one of the most reliable indicators that children are getting control of language.  They are becoming aware of words and sounds and can manipulate these to express themselves -- and impress others!  --Patricia Cunningham, Phonics They Use (1995)

I live with a two-year-old and a four-year-old and phrases like "Silly Billy" and "Okie dokie, Artichokie!" are spoken almost hourly.  Why?  Because they're so much fun to say!  AND because, like magic, my girls pay more attention to me when I rhyme!

De regreso a la escuela: ¡Qué locura por la lectura!

I know, I know!  School just finished this past week and the stores are still weeks from filling their shelves with crayons and pocket folders.

However, I am always on the quest for good books to begin the school year because those first read-alouds seem to be so important in building community and establishing our class's identity.  Today, when I was perusing the children's section of Spanish books at my public library, I came across a few gems that I will be sharing over the next few weeks.  I know it is crazy early but this will give you time to buy or reserve the books at your library.  I promise, you'll thank me when August (or September) gets here! :)



¡Qué locura por la lectura! is the translation of Judy Sierra's book Wild about Books.  I have always been a fan of Marc Brown's illustrations and Yanitzia Canetti's translations are widely respected.  She has been the translator of most of Dr. Seuss's book.  Can you even imagine trying to translate those?

The book starts out like this: