Do you find yourself saying the phrase -¡Español, por favor!- more often than you’d like?  Fall is a perfect time to set expectations for students to honor the language of instruction. In order to teach for biliteracy, teachers need to set parameters around language use. We encourage English output in English time and Spanish output in Spanish time.  Without guidelines, students will not necessarily strive to use the target language to the extent possible because they may use their other language when it is easier.  Beeman and Urow remind us how Spanish is a minority language in a majority culture, making it even more important that we take steps to elevate the status of the Spanish language. In this blog post, I’ll share some ways teachers have created conditions for students to honor the language of instruction.

Develop the value of bilingualism.  When kids can reflect and articulate why they want to become bilingual, they are motivated to get there. It’s critical that we develop the rationale for becoming bilingual with our students.  Fortunately, this comes naturally to many of us bilingual teachers!  We can:

Inspire with a read aloud                                                      Invite guest speakers

Set kids up to reflect on their personal why (travel, friendships, work, helping family, etc.)

Talk about our own personal journeys.  Maestro José Flores (introduced in an earlier blog post) displayed the image above to his fourth graders. He wrote a two-page journal entry about his path to bilingualism, including his struggles and his opportunities, and shared it with his students. I stumbled into his class as the lesson was happening. 26 sets of fourth grade eyes were mesmerized by his message.

Discuss why honoring language of instruction is important.  Here’s a connection we sometimes fail to make: in order to meet our goals of becoming bilingual, we need to TRY to stick to the language of instruction!  I wrote this song for my first grade students to drive the point home  (sung to the tune of frere jacques):

Release the responsibility  “Español, por favor”, “Español por favor,” “Español por favor”.  Let’s figure out ways to prevent the teacher doing all of the language monitoring, and sounding like a broken record. We’re all familiar with scarfs or signage that help call attention to the language. My colleague, Maestra Ester, created little flags for each table of students. A student job is to be the “guardian” of the language. This student waves the flag as a gentle reminder if someone at his table slips up. A second grade teacher, Maestra Luz, has trained her class to remind each other verbally “¡Español, por favor” in a friendly way, so the teacher doesn’t need to be the one doing all the work!

Support, support, support. Teachers can set students up to use the target language only by providing necessary scaffolds so that learning and language is accessible. Let’s not forget the value of supports that help all students, but are critical for language learners:

anchor charts                                              sentence frames                                conversation placemats

Teach strategies for what students can do to help themselves.  Kids benefit from knowing it’s ok to make mistakes, and that there’s value in trying.  Students can be taught to be strategic in the case that they are sharing a story or writing a message and want to express an unknown word. Here is an anchor chart  I developed for my class:

We developed one strategy at a time.  I modeled how the strategy works, we asked volunteers to demonstrate, and finally kids practiced in pairs on a simple task of sharing what they noticed in a photo card.

Here are some student examples of second and third graders using these strategies on the playground.  I prompted them to share a story about an injury:

Celia describes it.                Diana asks for help.         Julian uses air quotes.

Plan how you’ll respond to students.   Even by carrying out the steps above, it’s inevitable that a child will approach you mid-year during English time and ask “¿Puedo usar el baño?”  Think out how you’ll provide corrective feedback.  One of my principal’s favorite resources that addresses this topic is Tedick’s and Gortari’s  research on error correction and implications for the classroom. See their Types of Corrective Feedback  or the ACIE The Bridge Newsletter for the full study. It’s from a while ago, but still applicable!

In summary, kids will become bilingual by teachers carrying out purposeful teaching for biliteracy.  Let’s be intentional about setting up kids to honor language of instruction.
To readers: What ways have you set students up to use English in English time and Spanish in Spanish time?