The Bridge

Teaching for Biliteracy is a flexible framework that takes advantage of a wide range of biliteracy strategies in order to support language, content, and literacy development in two languages.  Click here for a list of biliteracy strategies: Biliteracy Strategies Description-Beeman and Urow

 

A Bridge in Kinder – Elements of the Bridge

This video shows students in a two-way immersion dual language Kindergarten class participating in a Bridge from content learned in Spanish (Science and Language Arts) to English.  Make sure to note the steps, or elements, of a side-by-side Bridge.  While the students in this Bridge are in Kindergarten, the elements of a side-by-side Bridge are the same across grade levels and content areas.  You can use this note taking guide as you watch the video in order to record your observations on how the teachers and students behave and use language during the steps of a side-by-side Bridge.

A Bridge in Middle School

This group of 8th grade DL students learn science in Spanish.  In this video, they use concept attainment, TPR, and partner share in Spanish to learn about the rock cycle, and to develop Spanish language arts.  The unit continues with the reading and writing portion (5 to 10 more days) before doing the Bridge.  This video includes an example of what the Bridge could look like as part of this unit; however, in this video, it was done the same day as the oracy building because it was a model lesson.  If it were done as a real unit, the Bridge would occur once the science and language arts concepts have been mastered; students would learn Spanish language arts and science in Spanish only.  English Extension activities would occur after the Bridge, and could include focusing on a narrative writing piece from the point of view of sedimentary rock but there would be no reteaching of the content learned in Spanish, instead, the focus would be on English language arts using the content learned in Spanish.

 

 

 

A Biliteracy Unit in 2nd Grade:  The Bridge

Part 2: This video is the second part of a 3 part series of a Biliteracy Unit in Second grade. This section captures Karen Beeman guiding bilingual students in a Transitional Bilingual Program in the Bridge. The Bridge is the moment when students synthesize their learning in Spanish, develop the matching oracy in English, and then add the English equivalent to what they have learned in Spanish. After created the Bridge, the students engage in the contrastive analysis between languages, identifying similarities (in this case, cognates) and differences (grammar as evidenced by the use of gender in articles and plural). Watch how students participate in creating their metalinguistic charts as part of the contrastive analysis. Strategies used in this video include: TPR (total physical response), side-by-side Bridge, and student personalized Bridges using graphs. See parts 1 (Spanish Video Page) and 3 (English Video Page) for the rest of the unit.

 

A Bridge in Kinder Dual Language:

The video below illustrates biliteracy strategies in action in a unit that begins in Spanish and then bridges to English in a Kindergarten class of a two-way, 90/10, one teacher, dual language program.   Please note that this instruction was provided to demonstrate and model the strategies used in a biliteracy unit framework and are meant to be implemented over several days or weeks of instruction.  You can look at this Sample weekly schedule for Kinder to see how the strategies would fit into classroom instruction over time.  You can also use this Template for Weekly Lesson Schedule for Teaching for Biliteracy for your own classroom planning.

These two Biliteracy in Action PowerPoint Presentations: Part 1 and Part 2, along with this Note Taking Guide for Biliteracy Strategies were shared at the 2014 IAMME Conference, and can be downloaded and used tools for professional development in your school or district.

 

 

A Bridge in First Grade Bilingual:

After engaging in oracy (listening and speaking) and literacy (reading, writing, word study and fluency) in Spanish with students on the theme of Responsibility, Karen Beeman guides first grade students in the Bridge to English using TPR and other language supports.  As part of the contrastive analysis focus, students look for and identify cognates and add them to their Cognate Chart.  Cognates can be used for further contrastive analysis such as the pattern in the words of the name of the unit:  Responsabilidad – Responsibility (-dad in Spanish often becomes -ity in English:  tranquilidad – tranquility; paternidad – paternity; fraternidad – fraternity; comunidad – community; habilidad – ability, etc.)