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Blog

07 Oct

Teacher Diversity & Tips for Coaches

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Coach’s Corner
José looked nervously to and from two corners of the room. The staff of Nuestro Mundo had gathered in the art room for a professional development at the start of the year. Teachers began exploring their own biliteracy profile, with three examples: 1)Elena, the normalista de México, 2)Monica, the U.S. born Latina, and 3)Susan, the adult Spanish learner, described in Chapter 3 of the Teaching for Biliteracy book. José ’s dilemma was that he could not follow the facilitator’s Read More...
03 Sep

Shifting Toward a Multilingual View of Biliteracy

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Shifting Toward a Multilingual View of Biliteracy
Shifting Toward a Multilingual View of Biliteracy On my first day of school in the United States, I did not know how to speak English. I looked “American” and had an “American” sounding last name, yet, when the teachers spoke to me, I could not respond. I was lost in a sea of language I could not access. In disbelief that I was a language learner because of how I looked, my teachers quickly grew concerned of my ‘deficiencies’ and Read More...
02 Sep

Below the Tip of the Iceberg

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Coach’s Corner
This summer I took my family to Spain!  I was reacquainted with my love for jamón serrano, and for a culture that honors finishing conversations instead of ending them abruptly to get somewhere on time. I also remembered my experience living with a Spanish family 15 years ago, when I was a less proficient Spanish speaker. I had countless moments of frustration, wishing my Spanish family could only see into my English-thinking brain and realize that I had ideas far Read More...
06 Aug

Las 5 excusas más comunes para no presentar en español

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Coach’s Corner
En algunas semanas, el personal docente regresará a un nuevo año escolar, y muchos de nosotros presentaremos talleres de capacitación de maestros. ¿Estaremos presentando en inglés o en español? Una de las premisas de la lectoescritura bilingüe en los Estados Unidos que nos plantea Teaching for Biliteracy es que el español es un idioma minoritario, y hay que ser intencional en elevar su estatus y no dejar que el inglés domine. Sin embargo, la capacitación de maestros en escuelas bilingües Read More...
01 Jul

RtI and Biliteracy: How can we gather data on oral language?

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Coach’s Corner
Last week I had the privilege of attending the TfB Summer Institute and leading a session: Intervention in a Biliteracy Framework.  This post will spotlight one hot topic that arose from the session, and invite readers to chime in with their thinking. Let’s face it: the term “RtI” and “intervention” carry a certain connotation, not always positive. Yet if you’re reading this post, chances are you recognize their importance. (After all, this is optional reading, and this is July!)  Chapter Read More...
04 Jun

Unexpected Notices: What Kindergarteners Learn About Language from the Bridge

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Beginning with Biliteracy: A Kindergarten Story
What do kindergarteners really understand about the Bridge? This year, I decided to ask my students to explain the Bridge in their own words so I could begin to document the effects of doing the Bridge in my classroom. In order to add an air of authenticity, I told my students that I had a friend who didn’t know much about the Bridge and I needed their help to explain it to her. The interviews were very informal—I simply Read More...
03 Jun

La orientación a un libro nuevo

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Coach’s Corner
La comprensión es la meta de la lectura, pero el lector emergente necesita ser guiado en cómo encontrar el sentido de lo que lee. Una oportunidad para desarrollar el significado de un texto es presentar el libro nuevo a los alumnos. En el capítulo 7 de Teaching for Biliteracy: Strengthening Bridges between Languages, Urow y Beeman hablan de “un paseo de dibujos”, en conjunto con charlas en pareja y un marco oracional . El propósito es construir el significado Read More...
03 Jun

Parenting a Bilingual Child-D Garcia

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Bilingual Parenting
When Liam Dario was born, I began to look for Native Spanish speaking child care, and was fortunate enough to bring my mother in law Rosa to come and live with us, and to take care of Liam Dario while I worked. I, of course, was ecstatic that my child would develop an intimate relationship with his abuela, but also that she would transmit to him and our family her funds of knowledge and language. Read More...
27 May

Planning & Implementing a Bridge with Young Students

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Beginning with Biliteracy: A Kindergarten Story
The Bridge is one part of a biliteracy unit. It is the part of the biliteracy unit where students have the opportunity to reflect on their learning as they generate a meaningful text that is subsequently used to develop metalinguistic awareness. The Process of Planning a Bridge I begin the process of planning a Bridge by considering what students might say when I ask them what they have learned during a unit. This includes the words and phrases I have identified Read More...
20 May

The Earliest Connections: Bridging in Kindergarten

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Beginning with Biliteracy: A Kindergarten Story
Kindergarten is a time of many new things in our students’ lives…a new school, new teachers, new friends…and for our emerging bilingual students, a new way of talking and thinking about languages. Depending on their background experiences, kindergarteners come to us with different levels of awareness and understanding about languages.  Some are not aware that there are two languages, even if they speak them both.  Others may understand that they speak to mom and dad in different ways, although Read More...
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