List of Appropriate Books on Epic! for Second and Third Graders Learning Spanish

Epic! is a great resource for teachers, parents, and students. As a teacher I use Epic! all the time to find books that cover our themes of study. Students use Epic! when they are reading books aloud or listening to reading, but in this instances, they are in charge of selecting their “right fit” books by themselves. However, for some reason, when students are not in the classroom, parents tell me that they struggle knowing if their child is reading good fit books at home or if they are pushing them too much or too little, mostly because they don’t know if the child is understanding the story or making up words (because they don’t know Spanish). Well.. if you ever had this problem before, you are in luck because I have created a suggested list of books that second-grade and third-grade students should be able to read comfortably and independently with good comprehension. The list of books below is based on books that can be found in the Epic! app. However, many of these books can be found at your local or school library.

List of Bilingual Books or Books Exclusively in Spanish:

The following books have been listed in order from the least difficult to the most difficult.  

Mi familia Calaca: My Skeleton Family by Cynthia Weill (Bilingual Book)  – This book is a simple book with great illustrations about a fictional but regular family that students can identify with.

¿Cómo crecen las plantas? by Julie Lundgren – This book is a non-fiction book that talks about what plants need to grow and teaches the reader about the parts of a plant. It includes a great glossary at the end to strengthen scientific vocabulary.

Corre, nada, vuela by Julie Lundgren – This book is a non-fiction book that describes the way living things can move, how they can run, swim, climb or fly.

Tornado (Spanish) by Jessica Rudolph – This book describes the first signs of a tornado as well as what to do when a tornado hits.

¡Soy tan maravilloso! by Mark Kummer – The main character is this book is first annoyed by the fact that he must stay at his mom’s office until she is done with work but somehow he finds the power of his imagination and is fascinated by all the adventures he can take when he lets his imagination loose.

El hábitat de los Murciélagos by Maureen Robins – In this book, the characters go from being afraid of bats to saving a local bat habitat from being destroyed. Plus at the end of the book, you can find activities to do with your child like making an informational brochure for example.

¡Volcanes! by Christopher Nicholas – This in-depth book about volcanoes covers all the facts you should know about how volcanoes are formed, why and how they erupt, types of volcanoes and the aftermath of a volcano’s eruption.

Avoid Language Loss over the Summer with these Websites (Links Entry)

At the end of every school year, parents ask me if their accounts will stay active over the summer because they want to make sure their child reads in Spanish and practices his or her grammar. In the past, my students have been able to use their Raz-Kids accounts and Istation account which only have Spanish assigned to them. However, I don’t feel like students can buy into only doing that all summer long, so here other ideas for you.

The very first thing I would recommend, simply because this was how I learned English is making your children watch their TV shows, videos, and movies that are already asking to watch in the target language. For that I would recommend the following:

Netflix: There are two ways to do this. You can search under the international movies and select the target language you are looking for or once you have found the movie you like, you can start playing it and click on the bottom right-hand side where you can change languages. I usually set both the language and the subtitles in the target language but that this is simply personal preference.

Youtube: Who is not familiar with Youtube? I mean, everyone is! Foregin language teachers rely on videos that they find on Youtube often. The tricky part is that they must preview it and teach students not to interact with the ads. However, it is still loaded with great videos and even free movies that children could watch. So as long as you are selective Youtube could be a beneficial tool for you this summer. You could get started with Disney films. If you are still not feeling comfortable allowing your child to be on Youtube you could use Discovery Kids Play which has many of the popular videos kids are interested in watching.

Kids love to play games. Here are two websites for students to “play” games while keeping up with their target language:

WordPlay:  Wordplay offers a free and fun way to review Spanish vocabulary words while tracking the user’s progress. You could set incentives for your child as he hits a new level and then go out in the community and do something fun to celebrate.

Polly Lingua: Polly Lingua offers free games for users as well as fee-based tutoring for many languages. Parents often ask me to tutor their child over the summer but I have a problem with that. First of all, if I were to tutor I would like to tutor all of my students and not only those who can afford it. Secondly, it would be a conflict of interest. So when I heard about Polly Lingua I was able to not feel so bad about having to tell the parents no, because now they had other possible alternatives. Finally, I like that students can select the Spanish region they prefer and their level of Spanish (beginner, intermediate or advanced).

All of the students I had last year were obsessed with famous Spanish songs they heard either at the playground or at home. They kept requesting to have them played at the end of the day and if students were able to follow procedures and complete their tasks that day I would play the requested song for them. If songs interest your child you could listen to live radio from any country you would like by using Radio Garden.

Radio Garden: Radio Garden allows the listener to tune into any radio around the globe just by moving around and clicking on the green dots. My favorite part is that it even provides the radio’s name and website if you want to follow them closely. One of my favorites radio stations, that plays only songs in Spanish is Radio Nervion. Click on “escúchanos en directo to listen to it live.

Rocaklingua: Even though the full access to the website is not free, there are an abundant amount of free songs that students can enjoy under the “songs” category. In addition, although this website started by focusing on creating songs for kids, now they offer games, videos, worksheets, recipes, and more! A fun activity for the whole family could be to have your child help you make Guacamole by telling you what the recipe is asking to do. Kids love to feel like they have a super power that adults don’t have (knowing a different language for example) plus they like to help in the kitchen.

Teachers call it the summer loss and it is true. At my school (which is a very low-income school) we have looked at past data and realized that students are able to read in average 20 words less per minute when they come back in August! Keeping up with reading over the summer will beneficial for you daughter or son. Here are some of the resources I recommend:

Lee and Low Books: I came across this website recently as I was looking for other interesting blogs to subscribe to in my niche. In their blog, they recommend ordering multicultural books from Lee and Low Books. I had never heard of them so I checked them out and I must say, it is a great resource for when you are looking for books that have not been literally translated into Spanish (or your target language of choice) and are actually engaging. My favorite part though is that in these books students from many different backgrounds can see themselves in the illustrations!

Raz-Kids: You may already be familiar with Raz-Kids if you I have had your child in my class but it is such a good resource that I had to share it with those who have not heard of it. Raz-Kids offers e-books for students to read anywhere and anytime. My favorite feature is that students can record themselves over the summer and the teacher can leave them comments about their reading. My other favorite feature is that students need to take comprehension tests at the end of each book to earn extra stars that they will use to build a robot and his spaceship. This website is not free but many parents opto to invest in it because their children absolutely love it!

That is it, for now, let me know how you like these resources and if you have any to add ot the list.

 

Thoughts from my Assigned Readings

This summer I am taking a class called Blogging in the classroom. For this class, we were responsible for reading several articles. As you already know, I am focusing on the topic of technology implementation in the Dual Language classroom so I tried to look at these articles through those lenses. Let me share with you some of the thoughts I had while reading some of my favorite articles from week one and week two.

The very first question any teacher who is trying something new in his/her classroom should ask oneself, why am I trying this? What are the benefits? The first reading helped me come up with those answers. When I read Learning with Technology by Weiler,  and Blogging and Blogposts by Stiler, I felt like I was given enough proof to reason with any parent that may ask me why I decided to have such young students blogging. I could tell them that according to Weiler, blogging is an excellent resource for student-centered learning and according to Stiler blogging has potential enhance the development of student reflectivity which in my opinion are two things we must improve on. I could add that it will become a forum where everyone can participate equally and can be heard regardless of being shy in the classroom or being afraid of making mistakes in the target language. I could also share that it will be available for parents to see what their children are writing about (many will be surprised by this because they don’t think their child can write in Spanish). Plus it will provide the students with the opportunity to comment on other students’ work and publish our work for bigger audiences to read. Think about this, anyone in the world who speaks Spanish could potentially access their entries and vice-versa!

From my second reading last week I learned that blogging is simply a “visual extension of the classroom” (Downes, 2004). In other words, a continuation to what happens in the classroom. In his article, Downes shared how a school maintains three weblogs at once: a class web page for announcements, a public space where students will share their reflections, and a private space for the teacher to communicate with the student and provide specific guidance. Although I really like the idea of having a separate private account I think that there are tools like Seesaw that could allow me to combine all three of these blogs into a single one and make it easier for me (the teacher) to keep track of. For example if you were to use Seesaw’s new blogging feature, you could still 1) post class announcements on the blog and 2) students could write a post in their digital journal and then move it to the Seesaw Blog view for anyone to read (if made public) or with those who have access (if you password protect it). Lastly, students would be able to keep private posts only between the teacher and the student by not moving it to the class blog and only selecting to share it with the teacher (and no one else). If this sounds interesting to you, you can watch the video below to learn how to use Seesaw Blog in your elementary classroom.

To continue with our topic, something that stuck with me from the Educational Blogging article by Downes is that against common believe, blogging is “defined by its format and process” and not the content that the blogger is writing about. Therefore not all blogs exclusively contain personal narratives. Actually, in my classroom, I plan to use it as a way to practice all types of writing! I think that blogging will motivate students to write and feel proud of their published pieces. This will allow them to see what they are capable of writing in the target language and build their confidence. It will also be of service to us as class discussion (or conversation) platform which will push students to hear the opinions of their classmates and if shared with bigger audiences with people they may never get to hear from otherwise.

From reading about RSS (Really Simple Syndication) I learned that educators are able to “establish an online communicate of practice” specific to their needs (Harrsch, 2003). In my case, my intention is to become part of an online community of practice specific to dual language teachers. RSS allows me to do so by cutting the time that I had to dedicate to browsing the Internet and finding credible sources or other professionals in my field. I currently am using The RSS Aggregator from the Chrome Web Store which allows me to not miss anything and saves me time by marking what I have already read in the past and what are new posts that others have made. To add, by creating an RSS feed for my own blog, the chances of more people reading my blog regularly increase which would allow me to network with other professionals in my same field easier. You should try it! This is what the one I love right now looks like.

References:

Downes, S. (2004). Educational blogging. EDUCAUSE Review, 39(5). Retrieved from https://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0450.pdf

Harrsch, M. (2003). RSS: The next killer app for education. Technology Source, 6(4). Retrieved from http://www.technologysource.org/article/rss/

Stiler, G. M., & Philleo, T. (2003). Blogging and Blogspots: An alternative format for encouraging reflective practice among preservice teachers. Education, 123(4), 789-797.

Weiler, G. (2003). Using weblogs in the classroom. The English Journal, 92(5), 73-75.

Welcome

My name is Itxaso Cayero but my second-grade students call me Maestra Cayero. I teach at a Dual Language Immersion school in Boise, Idaho. What is Dual Immersion? To summarize, the main goal of a Dual Immersion program is to allow students to learn a second language half of the time they are in school. In my school’s case, the Dual Langauge program was created because there were high numbers of ELL students whose native language was Spanish. Instead of hiring so many ELL teachers and pull students out of the classroom, they decided to hire ELL certified teachers that would teach in the general education classroom. In my school, each grade level has two teachers, one teacher teaches all day in English and the other all day in Spanish. I teach the Spanish side. With this program, students are able to learn Spanish if they are native English speakers or English if they are native Spanish speakers. The goal is to become fluent in both with the same high academic standards for both languages. 

Because I teach in a foreign language, sometimes my students don’t see the need to use the target language or don’t understand the value of learning to read and write in Spanish (in my case). Instead of just telling them that learning a foreign language was valuable I decided to show them how they could use Spanish outside of the four walls of our classroom. Students quickly felt motivated to speak Spanish so that they could communicate with their virtual friends. First, I started using Skyping to talk to students from Spanish speaking countries. I would simply allow students to practice their oral skills and get to know each other and their respective cultures. However, it didn’t take me long to realize that students were needing more. They wanted to show their friends what they had been learning about in class, show them our town and school, work on projects together, and that is why I kept integrating more and more technology into the classroom. Around this time, I realized I wanted to learn more about Educational Technology and see how I could fit it into my own classroom to provide my students with the best educational experience I can provide for them.

Before taking this class, I had a blurred idea of what blogging was and its educational benefits. I knew I wanted to learn more about the different types of blogs, how to effectively implement blogging in the classroom and become a better blogger myself! That is why I chose to embark on this journey and I am now taking Blogging in the Classroom as part of my Master of Educational Technology at Boise State so that I can take away as much as I can and use it in my profession and with my students. Come back soon to read about all I learn along the way and how I plan to use it in the foreign language classroom.