6F) Compare and contrast languages
Provide explicit opportunities for children to compare and contrast the two languages to support cross-language transfer of learning.
Strategy Overview: How to Use Picture Books (with math)
This resource offers guidance on how to use picture books to develop not only language, but mathematical content learning for Multilingual Learners. It includes prompts for before, during and after reading, along with booklists for five different areas of math.Read More
Video: Jim Cummins on Language Teaching Methods and Translanguaging
In this short video, researcher Jim Cummins explains translanguaging and the recent shift to acknowledge all languages in the classroom.Read More
Video: Multilingualism and Translanguaging
This video provides an overview of the benefits of multilingualism and translanguaging in schooling, including how language abilities are interconnected, how these abilities are used in complex ways to create meaning, and how students are able to effectively communicate using all the linguistic resources available to them.Read More
Strategy Overview: Haciendo conexciones lenguajes con nuestros niños
This guide (in Spanish) is designed to help families tap into the linguistic genius of their Multilingual children. It provides some common areas of transfer between Spanish and English and offers some suggestions for how to aid children in connecting their two languages at home.Read More
Strategy Overview: Making Cross-language Connections with our Children
This guide (in English) is designed to help families tap into the linguistic genius of their Multilingual children. It provides some common areas of transfer between Spanish and English and offers some suggestions for how to aid children in connecting their two languages at home.Read More
Strategy Overview: Así se dice
This strategy, designed by Literacy Squared, engages students in translation as a means of providing them with a deeper understanding of how ideas are conveyed across languages and cultures. It is designed to raise cross-language awareness.Read More
Strategy Overview: Metalinguistic Anchor Charts
This transfer strategy provides students with a clear visual method for looking at two languages side by side and comparing them. The strategy highlights the ways in which the languages work similarly and differently in order to strengthen students' mastery of both languages.Read More
Planning Guide: Teaching for Spanish-English Transfer
This K-6 Planning Guide aids teachers in preparing grade-level appropriate transfer lessons. It is organized using both the Common Core State Standards in Spanish and the ELA standards. Implications for transfer lessons are offered for each grade level.Read More
Strategy Overview: Transfer as a Means of Leveraging Linguistic Genius
This is an overview of the concept of transfer for teachers, and explains how bilingual brains make use of both languages. Three types of transfer are introduced and the idea of how to leverage transfer in the classroom is explained.Read More
Video: Bridging from Spanish to English—2nd Grade
This video shows a teacher helping her students transfer from one language to another through the use of cognates.Read More
Video: Cross Language Connections
This video shows a variety of language-transfer lessons to help Multilingual Learners develop meta-linguistic awareness and compare and contrast their two (or more) languages.Read More
Planning Template: El Dictado
The Dictado is a routine in which the teacher dictates a series of phrases or sentences, and the teacher and students collaboratively correct them. The Dictado serves to teach and reinforce basic writing skills within each language, and to highlight cross-language transfer. This template helps teachers analyze their Dictados.Read More
Video: El Dictado
In this video, the teacher dictates a series of phrases or sentences, and the teacher and students collaboratively correct them. The Dictado serves to teach and reinforce basic writing skills within each language, and to highlight cross-language transfer and reinforce the teaching points presented over the three days of implementation.Read More
Video: English, Spanish, and Chinese, too
This video is an example of an interaction between a teacher and a child that respects and promotes all types of language learning in the classroom. The teacher and child read together and build a conversation about speaking in English, Spanish, and Chinese.Read More
Video: Sharing at the Easel—Transference
This clip is an example of a teacher listening to a child narrate what she has drawn, and carefully labeling it with the child's exact words. The teacher acknowledges responses given in both English and Spanish.Read More
Video: Dr. Linda Espinosa—A Commentary on Brand New Words
In this video, Dr. Linda Espinosa reminds teachers that when Multilingual Learners are acquiring new languages, they also must learn how to make new sounds. Video clips show a bilingual teacher working on this phonological awareness with children, and allowing them to share the expertise of their home language.Read More
Blog Series: Beginning with Biliteracy-A Kindergarten Story
This series includes 10 blog posts that share information from a bilingual Kindergarten classroom perspective. Some posts are written in English and some in Spanish. They cover topics such as setting up a biliteracy classroom environment, making language connections and bridges for young learners, and instructional strategies for biliteracy.Read More
Article: The Bridge Between Languages
This article introduces the term "the bridge" as the purposeful work to connect, compare, contrast, and transition between languages in lessons and activities for Multilingual Learners. Examples and instructional tips are shared.Read More
Stragegy Overview: El dictado
"El dictado" is a strategy that a teacher can use in Spanish or English to model and structure language practice for students in spelling, grammar, and fluency. This overview includes an example sequence for instruction, a rubric for assessment, and tips for differentiating the activity.Read More
Blog: Dictado with Dr. Mónica Lara & John Seidlitz
This blog post introduces the Dictado strategy and shares tips and pitfalls for teachers who hope to implement this strategy with Multilingual Learners.Read More
Website: Amigos Bilingües
This website offers many video read-alouds in both Spanish and English. Many of the texts can be found in both languages, allowing the teacher to preview content in a home language and then let students transfer that knowledge to the text in their second language.Read More
Website Article: Family Dichos – Bringing the Language of Home into the Classroom
Bringing proverbs and sayings or "dichos" into the classroom is an instructional move to bridge family language and culture into classroom learning. This article describes this practice and provides resources on familiar "dichos."Read More
Tip Sheet: How to Use Bilingual Books
This resource explains how to use a variety of bilingual books to support Multilingual Learners’ language and literacy development. This tip sheet also includes a list of books with side-by-side translations, books that include a second language throughout the book, and books available in multiple languages.Read More
Presentation Slides: Organizing Instruction for Explicit Skill Transference
This slide deck presentation was used to present research and provide examples on how language skills can transfer from Spanish to English.Read More
Blog: A Chat About English/Spanish Pedagogical Connections
This blog offers a quick review of pedagogical connections between English and Spanish. Teachers can make linguistic connections visible for Spanish-speaking Multilingual Learners, and set them up to draw on all of their language resources for learning that they are familiar with, particularly on the differences and similarities between the two language structures.Read More
Blog: How Can Cognates ‘Beneficiar’ English Language Learners?
This blog discusses how teachers can intentionally use cognates to build comprehension for Multilingual Learners. This practice helps emphasize connections between Spanish and English.Read More
Website Article: Using Cognates with ELLs
This article and accompanying video remind teachers about the power of cognates: words that are almost or exactly the same in two or more languages. When teachers highlight these words during instruction, they help Multilingual Learners develop their own word-learning strategies.Read More
Video: That’s How You Say It/Asi se dice- 2/3rd grade
Students learn both literal and conceptual translation skills by engaging in the "That's How You Say It/Asi se dice" strategy. The teacher assigns students to strategic groups and chooses a specific passage of text for them to translate. Students have the opportunity to negotiate word meanings and compare and contrast their two languages as they work together to write and share their translation.Read More
Video: Transfer and Integrated ELD in a Bilingual Classroom
The teacher in this bilingual classroom makes an intentional plan to develop literacy and oral language skills in two languages. She begins content instruction in Spanish to strengthen Multilingual Learners' understanding of key concepts, and then purposefully transitions to an integrated ELD block to offer speaking and writing practice in English.Read More
Strategy Overview: Sentence Patterning Chart / La tabla de formación de oraciones
This resource introduces a strategy to model and write good descriptive sentences with Multilingual Learners. It combines language-based supports with opportunities for children to practice academic vocabulary and apply it to structured, content-based writing.Read More
Strategy Overview: The Dictado
The Dictado is a routine in which the teacher dictates a series of phrases or sentences, and the teacher and students collaboratively correct them. The Dictado serves to teach and reinforce basic writing skills within each language, and to highlight cross-language transfer.Read More
