25 Days of Classrooms: Así se Dice

This month I am sharing stories from
classrooms in Berwyn South District 100.

Day 5: Así se Dice with Theresa Carrillo (3rd Bilingual, Hiawatha)

     Our district has been doing a lot of work around Literacy Squared and biliteracy, through professional development with Kathy and Manuel Escamilla.  Their literacy structures help support bilingualism and biliteracy for our students.  One of the strategies that we are working with is Así se Dice, which is a strategy that uses the strategic use of translating to value the literacy skills our students have in 2 languages.

 

     A few weeks ago, Kathy Escamilla herself came to District 100 and observed in a few classrooms.  This post is dedicated to the lesson we saw in Theresa Carrillo's 3rd grade classroom.  She was using the book Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier, which is a graphic novel that celebrates Hispanic culture and the traditions around Día de los Muertos.  The book is available in both English and Spanish, so that made it a perfect choice to use translation to study author's choices when writing in the 2 languages, because it was easy to compare side by side.  The graphic novel format also helped with visual support for words the students were trying to change from Spanish to English.

 

    Ms. Carrillo reminded the students that when we translate, we have to look at the context of the situation, and the person/audience of the text.  There are many ways to say things, and when we translate from Spanish to English there are many choices that we need to make.  We have to focus on the  structure of language, and know when that's different.  We need to think about if we can make a literal translation, or if that wouldn't make sense.  We need to be aware that there are many words that mean nearly the same thing, and they by choosing one over another, we are making a craft decision.  Because this is such challenging work, the students worked in pairs to discuss the text and translate it orally before writing it down on the speech bubbles that had been whited out.

      

     Ms. Carrillo then took the first bubble, and put all of their partner translations on a white board.  As a class, they looked at their writing, and created a class translation of the text.  They did this while discussing word choice, verb tense, sentence structure, vocabulary, and many other language considerations.  They came to common ground, and wrote a shared translation (written in multiple colors on the bottom of the white board).  When they were done, they compared their written translation with the English text in Ghosts.

     There are so many things that I learned about language and biliteracy by watching the students in this class in action.  Thanks, Theresa Carrillo, for inviting us in and letting us learn from your students.  It is such a powerful tool to be bilingual, and you are showing your students how to use both their English and their Spanish skills simultaneously.  This will help them as they continue their literacy path for the rest of this year and beyond!