Stategies to teach bilingualism

Different Strategies
I have worked in 4 different school districts, and each of them have their own idea about how to make the most effective way to transferred students whose language is Spanish into English. I found it fascinating!

All the school administrators that I have worked for, and collaborated with, have wonderful, passionate intentions to make the students the most efficient English literate writers and speakers, so they trained you, and tell you that their way is the best way to teach them, but they forget to consider one element in their "agendas": the students.

I am a good teacher, well at least that is my belief, who has done every training and has followed all their suggested ways. What are "these beliefs" and do they work?

Let me give you some examples: 
At one district, I have been told and I have been trained that you need a partner who is a native in English, and a native in Spanish working together switching the students half day, so that the students learn from their "native" accents.  Yes, I agreed, in theory. 
Is it true?  No. Students will develop their own accents regardless of who, "natives", speaks to them, the most important issue is the quality of the vocabulary that each teacher uses with their students.
The comments that I hear from parents is that "my child was telling me that it may precipitate tomorrow, I asked him what is precipitation? and my child said---"oh mom, it means rain!" ------This is very true, the quality of the vocabulary is the focus.

Here is another example: 
At another school district that I worked, they trained me to make sure my Bilingual students never heard me speaking English around the school because it may confuse them. 
Is it true? No.
As a teacher, I want my students to hear me and copy me, I am a bilingual teacher, therefore I want my students to be bilingual as well. I want my students to learn how I choose to translate from Spanish to English and English to Spanish because it is all about Word Choice and what I am trying to communicate. I am a Role Model of how they should construct grammatically well formed sentences when they choose to speak in English or/and Spanish. This is one of the reasons I am a teacher, to be a Role Model of bi-literacy. Translating is one of the benefits of having students in bilingual programs. They hear how to translate to communicate their message.

The main point of bilingualism is to be able to communicate with more people, to keep up your native language and to learn to live in the new country.

There are different ways to do it. One is by setting up a routine by creating a habit of when, where, and to whom you speak your native language and the new language you are learning.

In my family, it is the people who carry the routine. What I mean is that, my own kids talk in Spanish with their grandparents. When they talked to us, parents, we talk in English.

A friend of mine, has her kids speaking English when they are outside the home, when they get home everyone switches to Spanish. Another friend does it with Vietnamese when they are at home.

Does it work? YES! You have to commit to a routine and the kids will follow it.    
At school this is what I do to teach vocabulary in both languages.

Check out my packets to teach students vocabulary, these have worked with my kindergarten and my first grade students. However, I have heard that their parents whose language is primarily Spanish, they are very excited because they are picking up the vocabulary as well, and they are learning along with their kids.

How do you do it? How would you do it?

Creating Bilingualism

I like to use a Transference Approach to teaching a second language.  Why? Because that is what I used to learn a second, and third language by myself. It works, you used what you already have, and you practice.

When I was living in Mexico I learn French. French was my second language. French took me longer to learn because I only knew Spanish. So it was a year before I was really fluent. When I decided to live in California, I used my Spanish and my French to learn English. I was fluent in 6 months. 

When I was in College, I become literate in Portuguese. What I did is that I used my Spanish, French, and English to apply and use to master Portuguese, I was able to do it faster because I had a great deal more of sounds from Spanish, French, and English. Then it was a matter of practicing. After a month, I was able to speak it, by the end of the trimester I was fluent. The more languages you speak, the faster it is when you learn your third, fourth, or fifth language. By then you will have more sounds in your brain that you can use to transferred into the new language you are learning. Then it is a matter of practicing.

What is Transference Approach?
It is when you teach your students (or yourself) to use the language they know with its sounds to apply it to a new language they are learning, and to make sense in order to communicate, to sound native as if you knew it all along.
I teach Spanish speakers to use their Spanish to transferred what they know into English. I start with the letter sounds, Spanish diphthongs, to imitate English as close as possible to talk.
I explicitly teach all the sounds until the students learn what is the same and what is different, so they learn to adjust it with what they know.

Three categories of Play

Play give students the opportunity to make sense of their surroundings whatever they may be. It is the time kids are given to exercise their imagination by exploring or pretending, and yes rough housing with their siblings and cousins.

As a teacher, I do hope that by the time they get to Kindergarten they have had plenty of play at home, at Preschool if they have gone to one. However, I know for a fact that I have gotten some students that do not know how to play. Well, they just get introduce to play in my classroom.

These are a couple of great books to read to get students going in using their imagination. No, I do not get any commission on any books. You can check them out from a Public Library.

I personally enjoy building Marble Runs, wooden marble runs. I wish I had the space to just build a marble run and let it be. But the majority of the time we need that space for something else.

Physical Play: Children need to play physically, the rumble and tumble kind of play.  Usually done at home, this is the one kind that definitely happens at home. At our schools we do not encourage it, and if there are any parents out there that think that this is ok. It is not. This must happen at home under an adult supervision ready to intervene in case someone breaks a bone. As a teacher, and occasionally as the Principal of the day, all of the issues are with students who get to the Principal's office because students think it is ok to play fight and be physical at school.

Exploratory Play: Children use an object to play. This object can be a toy, a box, a rock, a key, iPad, blocks, etc.

• Block Play have Seven Stages of development. Check these resources for block stages. I like the original Block Play Book, the new edited one, has one stage less: claiming six stages.  I like the original better.
• Another point to notice is that these stages start when children begin playing with blocks, no matter their age. 

1. Stage 1: Carry the blocks around from one side to the other.
2. Stage 2: Stacking either vertically or horizontally
3. Stage 3: Bridging using chairs to tables, tables to benches, etc.
4. Stage 4: Enclosures like a house, patio, garden, a zoo. Whatever their experience has been.
5. Stage 5: Enclosures with decorative doors and windows representing a theater, skyscraper building, a church, synagogue, a court house, etc.
6. Stage 6: Building places they know and adding other elements from other toys, like cars, dolls, stop signs, etc
7. Stage 7: Complex building places they know, and adding other elements from other toys to create a real place to role play like an airport, train station, a zoo, an apartment building, a school.

Pretend Play: Children pretend to be people, animals, and objects around them. There are also stages of development. This is fun when you join in. You get to be a tree or a rock. Fascinating!

• Stage 1: Using realistic objects like a real phone or play phone.
• Stage 2: Make-believe objects like using a rectangle piece of paper and pretending that is a cell phone.
• Stage 3: Social Play including other children. Starting to have a conversation about what they are playing. This stage is crucial because negotiation skills get tested, sharing toys, and taking turns become noticeable for the first time and that is when sometimes "Guided Play" an adult, parent, teacher must intervene to guide children to decide what to do. Students must decide with the guide of an adult. Some students do not need this guidance, only a few.
• Stage 4: Playing fictional characters, e.g. Dora the Explorer, Nemo, Dory, and any other character that students know from plays, books, movies.
• Stage 5: Real acting, with voice changes, and interpreting the real people around them. Children imitating mom, dad, brother, sister, their dog, their teacher. When students have been given the opportunity to play, by the time they get to Kindergarten they are already at this stage. The more mature children in Kindergarten are masters of pretending.

In the 20 years as a teacher, observing students playing, doing, talking, fighting, negotiating I have notice that the stages of development for the blocks, overlaps to other toys. I have always had a set of plastic animals in the classroom, through the years it has increased. My students have gone through the first 3 stages of block play with the animals. I will show you in the next blog.

In other words, the stages of development is not exclusively for block play only, it is also useful for other toys, in my case with the gigantic set of animals we have.

What is your favorite toy now as an adult?

Resources

The gardener and the carpenter by Alison Gopnik

The block book by Elisabeht S. Hirsch

Not a box by A. Portis

Not a stick by A. Portis

Kindergarten Conference 2017

My workshop "Learn to Include Play in your Day"was accepted at the Kindergarten Conference 2017, aka.
PK1 Conference. I was delight it to find out the my session was full! What an honor!
This is the first time that I presented at this conference. So I prepared my Powerpoint presentation but ended up transferring it into Prezi, a website for presentations.

The books here are the books that I read about "Play". Allowing our students to play is important in our Kindergarten, Preschool, First Grade classrooms, and If I was a Director at a school I will ask every teacher to include play in their day at Every Grade----hypothetically speaking because I am a teacher---not a Director nor Principal!

Why Play? One research that came from a 2016 book by Alison Gopnik "The
Gardener and the Carpenter"said that Play produces a Neuro Transmitter called Cholinergic which creates plasticity in the brain. In other words, allowing children to play is creating "a flexible brain". There was also another nugget of information about when children play means that they feel safe and secure.

What is Brain Plasticity? Plasticity is what neuroscientist have discovered about having a flexible brain that can learn at any age, change, and adapt. This neuroplasticity allows our brains to do so.

Why is brain plasticity so important? It is important because it is the ability for the brain to re-wire itself. Without this ability what will happen?

We also know that when children play, they learn to self-regulate, to take turns, to negotiate with others, to exercise their intrinsic motivation, and to be patient (which seems to me that the new kids do not know what that is).

No, I do not make any money on any books that I am posting. I have read them and I have used them in my classroom. But you need to know where the information is coming from and you can read these books for yourself.

I will leave you with this quote from Plato "You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation"

Check out these other books and websites:

The National institute of Play

Purposeful Play 

 The Power of Play

 Play

The Block Book










Tools of the Mind

Cyber Monday Sale!

Cyber Monday is almost here!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Bilingual-Blooms

So I will have a sale in every item in my little bitty store at TeachersPayTeachers.

It is so little because it is very hard to work full time, be a mother full time, and write full time!

Wow!

I am so grateful for so many of my colleagues that do manage to post their wonderful lesson plans! Thank you! I really appreciate all your wonderful work!

It is tricky to manage, so yes, I have been writing, and I almost have brand new material to post, so please check my store in the following week, but life keeps happening and family comes first!

So my little bitty store will have a sale starting tomorrow Sunday through Tuesday!
Wishing that every reader that stumbles onto my unpredictable blog has a wonderful, happy, and full of humor holidays, whichever holidays you enjoy the most! I celebrate as many of my holidays as I can so you know!

Looping to the Next Grade Level

Educational Looping is all about the students you are teaching!

I decided to loop this year with my Kindergarteners to First Grade, what a joy! We were able to move on from Day 1 of school. We have gone to school 50 days and they have already grown up.

Their writing is getting more sophisticated, their drawings are getting more detailed, and when we do mathematics their ideas are expanding past the 100 number. I am very excited to have such a great group of students and learned that their families have been very supportive by accepting me as their teacher for a second year in a row. What a privilege! Thank you!

As a teacher, I had to move classrooms which was not my intention, but I had to follow instructions, so I am in a "normal" size classroom but I am definitely "packed".  Which brought me to the decision to create an online Art Gallery since we do fit everyone in the one bulletin board in our classroom. I use Artsonia.com : Strobridge School 
I invite you to visit us there!

Technology Choices

Have you wonder what platform to use about technology? Google? Microsoft? Apple? Linux?

My district has chosen Goggle, however they have provided us with Lenovos that have Microsoft Office 365 as well. They have allowed us to get some training. Before, some teachers on special assignments were allow to use Apple laptops. 

As a teacher in the classroom learning to apply and integrate technology within my lessons, I will use whatever I can get access. So when the Internet is down, we can not use Goggle documents or presentations, so I have to use Microsoft PowerPoint, when my Pc is out of battery, I can use the Apple laptop.

I do have to say that Apples hardly break down. They are truly work horses! There is what you are paying for in an Apple.

As educators, we need to transcend the molds of a platform and move into teaching the students concepts and skills that can be apply in real life.

I have been teaching for a good chunk of time, and we need to connect to the real problems we are facing when educating our future students.

I believe that teaching students keyboarding skills, how to write a document in a word processor, how to create a graph, how to put a presentation together from the photos and video you took, the list goes on and on.

Does it really matter if you are doing these projects on a Apple, Microsoft, or Google? NO! It does not matter, there are just some adjustment in what the programs you are using, just like changing shoes? Right? Wearing boots has a different feeling than wearing your clogs, or tennis shoes.

Life is about concepts and skills you can live on, work on, dream on, struggle that makes life interesting!

So take that technology class your school district offers for free, and join in a education movement!