Small Moments

We have started our unit on Small Moments. I started by making this chart to help my students get started on what to write about. I saw it in English during my training at Teachers College at Columbia University.  This is what my team partner and I came up with as the Spanish version.  (I did add a drawing of our writing paper next to step 3..but it was added after I took the picture.) Hope this helps.

Letra E/Short E sound

This is our circle map for short E and letter E in Spanish.  We are only identifying words that have the initial sound. One again you can see the color distinciton for the language. At the top we started adding high frequency words the students already new and that I have a hard time drawing a picture or finding clip art for. Doing this activity really gives me insight to what vocabulary my students already come with.

Daily Schedule

This is a daily schedule I have posted in my classroom. I got the idea of using pictures from Ms. Cooleys 1st grade schedule on First Grader....at Last.  I changed it a bit but the general idea is there.  Ofcourse once again you can see clearly what subjects I teach in Spanish by the color red and which subjects are taught in English by the color blue. There are three subjects which we alternate by days which was hard to color code so I just left them blue, Read Aloud, Writers workshop and Math.  In the future I might change these to show both colors like Science/Social/Art section but for now I'm just going to leave it as is.

Guided Reading Data wall

We use guided reading as our way to differentiate reading to meet the needs of our students. One of the things we must have is a data wall showing what level each student is reading at. I've seen some creative ones in other classrooms but what I found was that in the Dual language classrooms teachers had to create two walls, one for the Spanish and one for the English. So I put on my thinking cap on and came up with this idea of how to have the level change but not have to have two data walls!  I created a neighborhood including a library, school and of course homes.  Each student is in a car which I purchased from Lakeshore. Then I took their pics and cut them out to fit inside the window.
Each tire shows their reading level. The red tire shows their Spanish reading level and the blue tire
shows their English reading level. As they move up in
levels we just add a new tire. My data board doesn't
change....other than my students adding new buildings. They are presently working on adding a
park to our neighborhood which they so nicely pointed out was missing from our neighborhood!
I love my students. This is also a good way for my parents as well as my administrator to get a quick view of where my students are currently working at. On the left side of our board is also posted the grade level appropriate goal so that my students know what they are working towards.  They are constantly asking what they have to do to move up in level because they all want to be at level I which is the end of first grade goal. I'll post a pic of what it looks like once we have added our trees, park and the rest of the neighborhood.

Letra A/Short A sound

Circle Map Aa

We are working on learning vowel sounds in Spanish and comparing them to the short vowel sounds in English. We start by creating a circle map of all the words my students know that begin with that sound. I use red to differentiate Spanish words and blue for the English words.  I use this pattern on all my charts.  I also add clipart as a scaffold for my non-readers.  Some might argue that both languages should not be on the same chart but I find it helps my students notice the difference in the sound of the English short a and the Spanish a as well as which words make a similar sound.  We spend a week on each sound....I'll post pics later this week of the follow up projects to each letter.

Bilingual Writing Center

I've been working hard these past couple of weeks implementing my centers. Creating charts for my students in both English and Spanish is a challenge. We have multiple sources for the English but very few for the Spanish. This one is one I saw on a blog...not sure which one but I would like to give credit if you know where it came from. My students discussed what good writers can write about and we came up with this list. I added some clipart as a visual scaffold for my English only speakers. It hangs over my writing center as a reminder to the students.  Our list of things good writers can write about has now grown after 4 weeks....I'll upload that one later.  For now I think this is a good start.

New to Blogging

Hello all. I'm new to blogging so please be patient with me if I get something wrong.  I'm hoping this will be a helpful site for all those teachers in a bilingual or dual immersion classroom as I find that all though there are plenty of resources in English there are very few in Spanish. So...hence the beginning of this blog. I will be uploading all the Spanish materials I create and translate. I am hoping this will help us all.
As of right now I am four weeks behind blogging schedule but I am off to a great start now and hope to be able to continue blogging on more frequently.  If there is something you are interested in seeing please let me know as I may already have it but just haven't had the time to post.  I will also be placing some things for sale at TPT once I figure out how to do it. Okay blog world....here I come.