Literacy Lesson: El tío Paco y la nieve

I just found this book by Ricardo Alcantara last week at the library.  It's a perfect read-aloud for second or third grade and a great anchor book for discussing how characters change.  It would also be a good mentor text for modeling writing about character change with fourth grade writers.

Julia, the main character, is known for being "bastante perezosa" at the beginning.  She likes to spend her weekends in her pajamas, lounging on the sofa and watching TV.  Her Tio Paco comes to visit and suggests an excursion to the snowy mountains.  Julia finds everything wrong with this idea.  I love how the author describes her attitude: 

Era evidente que la excursión no le hacía gracia.  Al bajar del tren, cuando la brisa helada le tocó el rostro, su malestar fue aún mayor.  Con cara de pocos amigos, como si estuviera enfadada, comentó:  --¡Oh, qué frío!

Just as she is feeling even worse for the cold, her uncle starts a snowball fight with her.  The whole family joins in until Julia is laughing so hard she isn't thinking about the cold or being at home watching television.  On the way home, she even asks her uncle about the possibility of returning soon.

If this was the first time I was introducing the concept of character change, I would use my Emoticons cards.  Depending on your students' vocabulary, it might be necessary to take one class period to just familiarize them with the vocabulary terms for emotions.  They could sort the emotions according to positive or negative feelings.  You might have them draw an Emoticon out of a bag and tell their partner about a time they felt that emotion.

When students are familiar with these emotions, read aloud the book El tío
Paco y la nieve.  Pass out the Emoticon cards and ask students to identify which of these emotions was demonstrated by Julia during the story (enojada, frustrada, sorprendida, contenta, emocionada).  Once students have identified the emotions, make a list on chart paper in the order they are shown in the story.   Return to the story and model rereading to find text evidence that supports our conclusion that Julia feels a certain emotion.  Next to each emotion in the list, write key words or phrases from the text that provide evidence.  Repeatedly use the sentence, "Sabemos que Julia se siente ____, porque el texto nos dice que..."

This book deals with very simple but very relevant emotions and change within a character.  Other books will delve much deeper into character development and lifetime change.  El tío
Paco y la nieve is not about heart-wrenching emotional change!  It does, however, present a simple structure for understanding plot and character.  As your students apprentice with this book and its simplicity, they will soon be able to move on to deeper, more layered texts.

For more info on teaching about character change and motivation, see this ReadWriteThink.org lesson plan. 

If you would like to use a Spanish version of RWT's graphic organizer, you can find my version here.

I hope you and your students enjoy this little gem of a book!

What's the Language of the Day?

There are so many interpretations of the term "dual-language education". Depending on the model to which your district or campus subscribes, you may be responsible for the instruction of one language for all subjects throughout an entire day or for specific subjects every day. However, due to lack of qualified personnel or a multitude of other reasons, YOU may be it! You may be responsible for instruction in both languages according to the day or subject, depending on the model.

If you have had any experience in this context, you know that it can be confusing both for you and your students. The question, "What language are we speaking?" can often be heard and just might be something you have asked yourself!

While it can be difficult to make the switch between the two languages, it is not impossible. One thing we know is that students respond to context and that response can trigger an appropriate reaction in their brains. For example, I am a tall (6' 1") Anglo woman. When I am consulting on a campus, I try very hard to observe and converse with students without disrupting the classroom environment. Yet, my skin and height make that a bit of a challenge! I find it interesting though that even Pre-K and Kindergarten children will automatically switch from Spanish to English when I bend down to observe their work. Since they have never heard me speak, they are using visual context to determine the best form of communication.

So, as dual-language teachers, our question should be, "How can we create contexts which indicate a shift from one language to the other?" It might be a visual sign that we flip and read aloud (see the four examples below).

I have seen primary teachers use different stuffed animals or puppets to quickly intro the switch. Others play a particular song or CD indicating the transition. What other ideas have you tried to create a context for switching the language of instruction?

Weight a Minute!

Pardon my bad pun but I was going through some old pictures and found these that I took from a second grade bilingual classroom in Mesquite. This is why I believe we shouldn't buy prepackaged posters for our classroom! I love how this teacher took items that were relevant to her students and used these to make associations for measurement. The only addition I would make would be to add in the English term so that the students could see a lot of cognates!

Literacy Lesson: Textos de no ficción y propósito del autor

From the STAAR Third Grade Reading Information Booklet: Los estudiantes analizan, infieren y sacan conclusiones sobre el propósito del autor en contextos culturales, históricos y contemporáneos, y proporcionan evidencia del texto para apoyar su comprensión.Just the other day, I sat next to a friend while trying to explain to her the basics of Pinterest, specifically the why and the how. Within a few minutes, she was hooked and I sent her pinning merrily on her way.

We all find ourselves at different points on the spectrum of taking on the newest trend in technology. However, most of us are successful with those trends when given a moderate amount of guidance and the opportunity to make connections to what we are already familiar with. As adults, we already have a framework for examining WHY we would want to tackle a new type of media. Will it entertain me? Will it keep me informed? Will it explain how to do something new? Will it try to change my perspective?

Our minds also possess an internal structure for HOW to interpret the new media and understand what is important. We don't exhaust ourselves with reading every single word. We don't necessarily start at the beginning every time and move forward in a sequential order. We also give ourselves permission to abandon the media if it is not meeting the "why" for which we originally agreed to give it a look.

Even with all of this experience, we can still feel inundated at times. Just think about our students! They begin their reading journey thinking that reading is simply about learning the letters and the sounds they make and putting those sounds or sílabas together. They (hopefully) have heard hundreds of stories read aloud to them and retain a framework for understanding those simple narratives.

Yet, we know that the texts of life are not all fictional narratives. Research also tells us that many of our students will fall much more deeply in love with reading if we allow them to explore world of nonfiction. When I first heard about the benefits of nonfiction with my young students, I excitedly began pushing on them all sorts of expository texts. After several weeks of a less than enthusiastic response from my students, I began to question those researchers. It was then that I read Debbie Miller's Reading with Meaning about her journey into critical thinking with her first graders.

I realized that my students needed to learn to determine the "why" about the new genres of books they were reading. We created a chart similar to this one I snapped from a Mesquite second grade teacher's classroom. I would suggest adding to explain/para explicar.

I began scavenging for all types of text anywhere I could find it. I discovered that the entrances to grocery stores like Fiesta or Carnival are great places for diverse (and FREE) types of Spanish text. Phone books, newspapers, and tourism pamphlets are typically easy to find in both Spanish and English. These were cut apart and placed in a basket. Many times throughout the year, I would hand a type of text to each student and ask them to bring it up to our chart and sort it according to the author's purpose and why we might want to read more about it.

Those conversations spilled into our library time. As the students would bring their books up to the checkout counter, we would discuss their purpose for reading it based on the author's purpose for writing.

Once the students had a general idea of why we read different types of text, we began to implement what Debbie Miller calls the Nonfiction Convention Notebook. You can download my free bilingual template here. As I observed my students read nonfiction text, I saw them do what I and their previous teachers had taught them to do: just pay attention to the letters and their sounds. I was amazed as they diligently focused on the tiny writing and seemed oblivious to the captions and tables and bolded print. Apparently, I had to teach them to pay attention to those things as well! Go figure!

The Nonfiction Convention Notebook or charts like this one (also snapped from the teacher above) do a great job of helping our students to notice and understand how to approach different types of text. As we point out these features and study them over time, the students' eyes will begin to notice them and recognize their usefulness for reading.

If you are anything like me, your time spent reading fiction is limited to bedtime or the beach. The rest of our day is consumed with nonfiction text everywhere we turn. Aside from the fact that is IS IN YOUR CURRICULUM and ON THE TEST, developing within our students a framework for understanding nonfiction is so much fun and opens a new world of texts to read for the rest of their lives.

So, what are your favorite ways for teaching author's purpose and the characteristics of nonfiction?  As dual-language teachers, this is something that can and should be taught in both languages because there is complete transfer!

Literacy Centers - Rodar una palabra

While budget cuts have reduced the number of conferences they get to attend and a long to-do list keeps them out of the teacher's lounge, Pinterest allows teachers to still share the amazingly creative things they are doing in the classroom. I recently visited Stephenville ISD where a fabulous Kindergarten bilingual teacher has been researching Pinterest and adapting the ideas she finds to work for her bilingual students. This idea, for example, became this literacy center:

The kids loved it and got in some great practice reading and writing their high-frequency words!

Mentor Text: ¿Qué puedes hacer con...?

Using mentor texts has become fairly standard practice in writing workshop classrooms.  Teacher books like this one and this website provide excellent bibliographies of books that serve well as mentor texts.  Unfortunately, these lists rarely suggest any Spanish texts.  So, we are going to begin a quest for excellent Spanish literature that we can use to enrich our students writing in Spanish and transfer those skills into English as well.

Let’s begin with two books that I just discovered at the library:  ¿Qué puedes hacer con una paleta? and ¿Qué puedes hacer con un rebozo?  Both are bilingual books written by Carmen Tafolla and illustrated by Amy Córdova. 

 

Taking everyday objects, the author poses the title’s question.  She then proceeds to brainstorm lots of things to do with the object.  I think this book would make a great mentor text for teaching second through fourth graders about how to come up with ideas for a piece.  In these two books, Carmen Tafolla doesn't go on to develop one of the ideas like we would for a personal narrative but her text is a great starting point in our journey to teach students to think divergently before converging on one single big idea.

You can begin the mini-lesson by discussing that good writers always begin with a good idea.  Often the best writers use an idea from their daily lives.  Carmen Tafolla does exactly that.  After reading the book at least once to just appreciate its beauty and language, revisit the book, page by page, and create a graphic organizer that lists all of the ideas.  I chose to use a web but you should use whatever makes the most sense to you and your students.

Any of the ideas above could be further explored or "exploded" as Barry Lane has described in order to create a personal narrative.  It is Tafolla's creative brainstorming that we want students to take away and emulate as they continue their writing during the workshop.

The next day, let students sample Tafolla's ¿Qué puedes hacer con un rebozo?  Provide a blank version of the same organizer that you used the previous day.  Upon the second reading of the book, ask students to take notes of the ideas that the author comes up with for the many uses of a rebozo. 

Throughout the week, ask students to come up with a list of objects that they interact with every day (scissors, hat, spoon, chair, etc.).  Assign an object to partners or small groups and have them brainstorm an idea web of creative ways they might use this object throughout their day. 

You may choose to have students select an idea and develop it or create a piece that descriptively lists the uses just like Tafolla does.  In this instance, it doesn't really matter if your students ever produce a completed text based on this mentor text.  Tafolla's books can mentor students in the process of divergent and creative thinking which is so necessary in laying the foundation for good writing of any type.

Bilingual Books on CD Giveaway

Mommy Maestra at http://www.mommymaestra.com/2012/01/bilingual-books-on-tape-giveaway.html is giving away two book and CD sets by Alma Flor Ada.  I have heard Alma speak at bilingual conferences.  She is an incredible author and I have never read one of her books that did not connect with my students.  Go pay Mommy Maestra a visit and check out some of her free downloads!

Bilingual Word Walls...Worth the Space?

Word walls...you either love them or you hate them! They are kind of like a pet. They require lots of care and maintenance and long-term commitment. The question is: Do word walls provide enough return on your investment? This is an especially key question for the bilingual and dual-language teacher because, in order to maintain a balanced language environment, it will be necessary to have TWO word walls.

Here are some pictures that I have taken over the years as I have visited various dual-language classrooms (the last two were taken at the very beginning of the year so no words had been added yet!):

I have had word walls up in my classroom every year that I have taught. However, during my first few years of teaching, I put all of the words up at once and hoped that my students would internalize the reading and spelling of these highly-frequent words by simply having them present in the room. Occasionally, when a student asked how to spell a word, I would point him to the word wall and say, "Well, it's on the wall!" and send him off to search. It was rarely a fruitful search and I began to question the point of a word wall.

I began my sixth year of teaching in a new district that placed a high priority on word walls. Before the school year began, I sat in a two-day training on Balanced Literacy and heard continuously about how the word wall was to be one of the anchors for my reading and writing throughout the day. I learned that I should choose just a few words each week to add to the wall. Every day, I should review those words, connect how those words might help us write other words, and discuss my encounters with those words during my shared reading and shared writing.

As school started, I began putting into practice my new learning about word walls and I was amazed. The more I interacted with the word wall, the more my second-grade students began to use it in their reading and writing. We would spend about five minutes every day (two days in Spanish and two days in English) studying the newly added words as well as the previous words. We chanted the words, wrote them on dry-erase boards, and played various brief games to continue to familiarize the students with the words and their locations. Throughout the rest of the day, word wall words continued to magically appear as we read during guided reading or in the content areas. As we wrote, we found that those same word wall words were incredibly necessary to practically anything we wanted to write.

So, yes, I believe word walls are worth the space. I especially believe they are worth the space in dual-language classrooms. As my supervisor often used to say, "Dual-language education is an enrichment program, not a remedial program." Our students are learning twice the amount of words in the same amount of time as the general education classroom learns one. Word walls provide an organizational structure of support for our students as they take on this challenging task.

All of the pictures above were taken from a district that required red to be associated with the Spanish word wall and blue to be associated with the English word wall. In one of my favorite articles about bilingual education, Samina Hadi-Tabassum writes "Learners more easily become bilingual when they connect each language to a separate context." In her article "The Balancing Act of Bilingual Immersion" in Educational Leadership (Dec. 2004/Jan 2005), she discusses different ways to separate languages for instructional purposes while at the same time encouraging students to consider mediation and transference between the two (or more) langauges. Having separate word walls that are organized similiarly helps to do that. Young students can begin to see that they must turn to the English word wall when writing a piece in English. Yet, they can also notice that, while both word walls are organized in the same fashion, the Spanish wall has letters which the English wall does not.

If you feel your word walls are more wallpaper than instructional aids, consider whether you are making a big enough deal about them. Yes, they do require daily care and maintenance, but they can become a second-teacher in your classroom for your students. Can you really put a price on that?

Becoming Cognizant about Cognates

If you've read any book or attended any training on Second Language Acquisition, you've heard about the importance of cognates.  You are also aware of the blank stares you are likely to receive if you were to ask students what these words have in common:  científico, scientist. 

Cognates are really helpful to adult language learners but their usefulness often eludes our school-age students.  They just don't see them!  One of my theories is that these young learners are still new to reading itself.  Because of this, their ability to scan a text is still very limited.  Their eyes are still learning to visually capture more than one or two words at a time. 

My other theory is that we as teachers just don't make a big enough deal about them.  Think of all of the other things that our students aren't cognizant of before they come to our classrooms.  Yet, because we make such a big deal about capital letters and punctuation and important letters or words, they begin to see them in everything they read or write.

This cognates chart is from a first grade classroom in Mesquite ISD where the teacher decided to be intentional about helping her students pay attention to cognates.  Notice how the teacher underlined the similarities between the English and Spanish spelling. She told me that this had made a significant difference in her students own writing and reading as they are really beginning to understand how Spanish and English can support one another.  As their reading ability increases, these first graders are going to be so well prepared to use their understanding of one language to aid in their understanding of the other.  These guys are truly going to be college-ready!

Literacy Lesson: The First Tortilla

While legends are not difficult to find in Spanish literature, The First Tortilla by Rudolfo Anaya still deserves to be highlighted.  It is a perfect anchor text for second or third-graders to begin to understand the genre of legends and folktales. 

Legends follow the structure of a traditional narrative but they possess a few additional layers that we can point out to our students.  For example, with The First Tortilla, we could begin with the following organizer based on the narrative structure of Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then:

Alguien - Jade

Quería - llevarle comida de regalo al Espíritu del Monte para que llegaran las lluvias a su pueblo.

Pero - sus papás le dijeron que una muchacha no puede subir la montana porque era demasiado peligrosa. 

Entonces - Un colibrí le ayudó a llegar al Espíritu del Monte y el Éspíritu quedó complacido con su regalo.  Le dijo que mandará lluvia a su pueblo y también le dio granos de maíz como regalo. 

Así que - Jade regresó a su pueblo con el maíz y plantó los granos en su jardín donde cayó la lluvia. Usó los granos de maíz para hacer la primera tortilla. Cuando compartió las tortillas con la gente de su pueblo, las tortillas de maíz se convirtieron en la comida favorita de la gente. Realizaron una ceremonia para dar gracias a Jade y al Espíritu del Monte.

If your students are already familiar with the SWBST structure, they may know that it could be used to describe how any problem was solved, whether real or fantasy.  However,  legends are a unique type of narrative because they:

• explain the origen of something (La primera tortilla de maíz)
• are fictional stories (Las colibrís y las hormigas no pueden hablar.)
• have some historical truth (El descubrimiento del maíz fue muy importante para la gente de México y de ahí se originó la tortilla de maíz.)
• have a moral or theme (Jade y la gente de su pueblo aprenden la importancia de dar gracias por la lluvia y la cosecha.)

When your students are ready to identify the similarities and differences between legends, I think this one would pair really well with Tomie dePaola's Legend of the Bluebonnet/Leyenda de la flor "El conejo".  Both have young girl protagonistas that are on a quest to save their villages.

In the upper grades, the students will be introduced to pourquoi stories.  Pourquoi is a French word that means... Wait a minute, I don't have to explain that to you because you understand cognates and have already figured it out! :)  Your students might not make that connection though and this is an excellent way to encourage them to use what they know in one language to make connections in another.

What are your favorite legends to read with your students?