Final Project

Patterns across literacy domains:

Juliet demonstrates aspects of a “two-language learner” (Beeman and Urow) across all domains of language. While she technically is a sequential learner, having become fluent in English speaking before the age of 3, she also grew up practicing Spanish with a bilingual (non-native) mother and is only 5 years old in her first literacy instruction at a Dual Language Immersion school. According to Beeman and Urow, “Two-language learners have grown up using both of their linguistic resources, and have strengths in both languages. These students are exposed to English literacy on a daily basis: on television, in stores, on street signs. Given the bilingual environments of these children, sequential literacy is a fallacy.”

In Juliet’s communication attempts in all 4 domains she was likely to access the code she had been instructed in, regardless of the language she was attempting to use. While this transference affected Juliet differently across the domains, it still illustrates my assertion that she is truly a simultaneous bilingual. The tension in her literacy development, and perhaps in that of all DLI Kindergarteners, will be that she is learning in a sequential literacy program where “students [are] learning to read and write in one language first, and only begin[ing] to receive formal literacy instruction in a second language at a later point in the program.” (Beeman and Urow, IRC May 2009, p 3). Described below are some of the transfer patterns witnessed in this simultaneous bilingual learner in a sequential program.

Reading/writing:

In both reading and writing, Juliet will attempt to solve problems with the code she has most accessible. That meant, in reading, that she commonly applied Spanish visual phonetic code to decoding English language. In writing she similarly used Spanish phonetic markers to encode English words. That meant she attempted to read the word “shoe” as “/s/-/h/-/o/”, and attempted to write the word “I” as “ai”. These typical transferences are, according to Beeman, common with language learners who apply rules from either language to the other. That was the primary pattern for Juliet in reading and writing, and more common for her than code-switching, which I only witnessed in one reading or writing attempt.

Listening/speaking:

While in her oral language development Juliet did occasionally use transference of code (applying the “s” ending from English to Spanish nouns, in an attempt to indicate possession) she was far more likely to code switch. Examples included “dame the marker” and “No es malo, pero es also, es also…” These code switches can be described most commonly as intra-sentential switches, wherein Juliet code-switched within clauses or sentence boundaries (Beeman and Urow, May 2009). I maintain that these switches occurred, as in her written language, when the code was easily at hand. She was more likely, for example, to pull school words out in Spanish than in English.

Hypothetical Cause/ Potential Effects

I believe that Juliet has learned from two powerful different teachers: her Kindergarten program, as well as her mother at home. According to Fortune and Menke, “Literacy development begins early. During the preschool years, most children from language- and literacy-rich home environments begin to recognize familiar letters and words as well as the structure and elements that make up stories.” It is definitely the case that Juliet’s early literacy experiences have given her the perspective that language and communication are important, books are fun, and that she can read and tell stories by reading or writing. It is also the case that her oral language development included both English and Spanish, and that she can consciously listen for both codes and produce both codes with success.

One of the causes of her frequent transferences and code-switches may have to do with the manner in which she learned all of these lessons about language. First, Juliet and her mother practice mostly social Spanish. Juliet will diminish the amount of time they spend practicing together, saying “Well, just sometimes we speak in Spanish at home”; even though I know that her mother dedicates a fair amount of her time to provided Juliet with an oral language base at home. This indicates to me that Juliet has learned many of her lessons about literacy by acquisition. At school, however, she was explicitly taught about language and literacy in Spanish. The majority of her phonetic codes for transcription and decoding were taught to her in Spanish, as were the academic vocabulary pieces such as: espacio de un dedo (finger space), arriba de la linea (above the line), arréglalo (fix-it plans), estira las palabras (stretch out the word). So when Juliet is asked to problem solve a literacy task, her academic code seems to be primarily formed from Spanish. Juliet has become an adept problem solver, however. She arrives at difficulty in reading, writing, or oral language, and doesn’t give up but blends the lessons from home with those at school to try and find a way to communicate her ideas. To quote Livant (The Bridge, 2006), “ Though immersion students learn to communicate in their L2 from the need to function in the classroom, they do not develop native-like oral proficiency without explicit instruction and activities designed to make them focus on the form of their speech, not just the content.”

What this means to L2/L1 literacy

While Juliet is just beginning her journey to biliteracy, she has now had almost one full year of those explicit, meaningful instructional activities in her schooling. I believe she will continue to grow closer and closer to native-like proficiency via problem solving attempts by herself and instructional design choices by her teacher at school.

According to Fortune and Menke, “In contrast to students learning to read in their L1, students learning to read through a language they are just acquiring must simultaneously develop oral proficiency in the second language, each of the aforementioned cuing systems and the reading process. For this reason, teachers can anticipate that learning to read in a language still being acquired will take longer.” This reassures us that while we need to plan instruction purposefully for Juliet, we needn’t yet be concerned that her transfers, code-switching behaviors, or partial acquisition of Spanish language code are keeping Juliet behind.

Fortune and Menke also state some benchmarks that monolingual students learning to read in their native language typically meet. They include:

·         By the end of Kindergarten, most monolingual students read upper and lower case letters as well as some words and simple books.

·         In first grade, the majority of students begin to decode words that they do not know by sight; by the end of first grade, they can read simple books smoothly, albeit word-by-word.

·         Second and third grade students begin to make meaning when reading, relating new information to what they already know; reading typically becomes smoother, more efficient, and more fluent…

Given these benchmarks, Juliet is not even behind to date. She currently reads simple books in both languages (with errors, but with comprehension), and can identify upper and lower case letters in both languages. In fact she is already attempting to problem solve words that she doesn’t know by sight and reading somewhat smoothly in her attempts at little books. Juliet is probably making gains above what may be considered a “typical” range for immersion learners.

Instructional strategies recommended for Juliet

Given the above analysis, I would recommend several strategies for supporting her language acquisition in her immersion setting.  Knowing that Juliet is a learner who is making gains in the general immersion classroom, I would plan for her using research based best practices that also could benefit the rest of the class. According to Fortune and Menke, “It is important for teachers to understand that instructional strategies that are implemented to meet the needs of a struggling learner will not take away from the learning of other students in the classroom; in fact, often times strategies aimed at helping one student or a small group of students result in gains for other students as well.” (Fortune and Menke, 2010, p 67) While Juliet cannot be considered a “struggling learner”, she can be considered a learner problem solving to acquire literacy, oracy, and a second language at the same time. I would call her a “busy learner”, and advocate for the following five adaptations and strategies to create a bi- literacy program for Juliet. I believe that these adaptations will benefit her and all of her classmates.

They are (Fortune and Menke, 2010 Chapter 5):

1.      Differentiated Instruction—varied and adapted learning instruction. Not just for struggling learners, this teaching belief modifies the curriculum around each student’s need rather than asking students to adapt to a curriculum. “Content, process, and what learners are expected to produce can be modified to meet a learner’s unique needs.” (p 68) Juliet will benefit from small group instruction in literacy, offering her a chance to hear and use authentic language, learn reciprocally from others, and practice her literacy skills with strong guidance.

2.      Multi-modal teaching and learning—presenting learning in a variety of modes or manners. Accessing learners through their strengths or intelligences (Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligence) can support content and process in a diverse group of students. Also working within and across the sensory mode strengths of learners can support their acquisition of language and content. Juliet has strong verbal and artistic intelligences, so presenting information with strong visual support and allowing her to practice content through spoken language will help her learn and grow. Also, she shows great auditory and oral strengths, so I would focus my instruction on her hearing and repeating content in authentic contexts.

3.      Strategies-based instruction—teaching learning strategies explicitly for students to use in their own learning. These strategies may be metacognitive (using thinking about how you learn to learn) or task-based (using thinking about the task to complete the task). Juliet will benefit from both categories of strategy instruction. I believe that she has such a vivid imagination she will easily be able to learn about visualizing, predicting, inferring and connecting as strategies to better think about her own comprehension. Also, as an artistic learner, graphic organizers such as writing planning sheets, character description maps, and other task-based strategies that use drawing will greatly support her literacy acquisition.

4.      Five standards of effective pedagogy—this research based model creates five standards for effective teaching, and could greatly effect Juliet’s learning. However, it requires a lot more study on my part than is within the scope of this paper to complete. In a nutshell, the five standards include Join Productivity, Language and Literacy Development Across the Curriculum, Making Meaning, Complex Thinking, and Teaching Through Conversation. What I like most about these steps for Juliet are their consideration of language as separate but related to content, the use of meaning making and higher order thinking, and the relationship between interaction around both content and language with teachers and peers.

5.      Cooperative Learning—students working together in pairs or small groups to accomplish the learning task at hand. Juliet, as an oral, auditory, and social learner will be held highly accountable for her language development through cooperative learning. By encouraging Juliet to interact in heterogeneous groups of language learners she will have more authentic reasons to practice using her L2.  

In reading

In the reading block I would like to see developed for Juliet, she would be learning in a balanced system with a blend of synthetic, socio-psychological and analytic manners. While this sounds counter-intuitive, Escamilla points out, “It is important to note that these orientations are not as dichotomous as they might appear.” (Teaching Literacy in Spanish, P3)  This, in my mind, means that Juliet and her classmates will be best served with some explicit teaching around phonetic code and visual cues in reading, along with language and meaning-rich activities that support her problem-solving and comprehension strategies in reading. I would also advocate for appropriate use of reading and literacy centers during Juliet’s independent work time. Since she will spend a fair amount of time independently working, I would like to see Juliet, “In a learning center, talking about concrete objects, playing a game, or completing a partner activity are interactive language tasks that serve as excellent vehicles to help students communicate purposefully in the L2.” (Click, 2004 p2) I would also hope that the environment in which Juliet learns is a text-rich one, with appropriate word walls, anchor charts, and student work modeling the value of reading and writing. These specific strategies would occur within the framework of the five adaptations listed above.

In writing

Much of what I hope for Juliet in reading I would also hope for her in writing. A text-rich environment with small-group instruction and centers-based independent time all apply to acquisition of writing skills as well as those of reading (and oral language, also).  I would also recommend encouraging Juliet to use her English to support her Spanish writing, based on Rubin and Carlan’s advice: “Bilingual children should be encouraged to write in both languages to create a broader picture of their literacy development. Many children show far more development in one language than the other, which will not be revealed to the teacher unless he or she asks the child to write in both languages.” This, while encouraging writing to be based in meaning, talking about the tasks of writing, and looking for patterns within written text. Activities such as The Bridge and The Dictado will be appropriate for Juliet as she gets into older grade levels.

In language

I hope that the school environments in which Juliet acquires her academic Spanish can closely follow the Immersion Teaching Strategies Observation Checklist by Tara Fortune. I would like to see her in a classroom that integrates language, content and culture, that attends to language growth specifically, that makes language comprehensible in a language rich environment where talk is accountable and extended. These types of values should be easy to incorporate in the balanced literacy, multi-modal classroom I have imagined for Juliet in the above paragraphs.

Sample Literacy Block Schedule for Juliet:

Reading/oral language:

Time	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
10 min	Whole group mini-lesson—focused mini-lesson on strategy, related to the thematic unit or topic of the language block. Modeled, shared, interactive reading rotates through mini-lessons every week.
5 min	Phonetic, phonemic, comprehension, vocabulary, or word pattern study activity. Activities to rotate/ one per day.
30 min	Guided Reading—in a small group (1:3-1:5), Juliet will practice the integration of Meaning, Structure, and Visual activities while
10 min	Computer listening center	Center with partner speak (barrier game, for example)	Center with realia for oral language/ phonetic matching. (Felt board storytelling, for example)	Center with reading text in room. (Read around the room with a pointer and a partner)	Center with white boards/magnetic boards/ etc.—for writing words or objects seen around the room.
5 min	Word study—playing a daily game or activity that focuses on seeing words that are known (find sight words in text), decoding or encoding syllabically (see a word with an iconic description, cover it, try to write it, check it), etc.
15 min	Read aloud—some time outside of the reading block (at snack/etc.), 15 min/day of interactive read aloud with comprehension, oral language, or vocabulary focus.

Writing/ oral language:

Time	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
10 min	Whole group mini-lesson—focused mini-lesson on strategy, related to the thematic unit or topic of the language block. Modeled, shared, interactive writing rotates through mini-lessons every week.
5 min	Word study activity to practice the skills/parts of writing (letter: sound, syllabic segmentation, finger spacing, etc.) that is focus of the day.
20 min	Guided Writing—in a small group (1:3-1:5), Juliet will practice the integration of Meaning, Structure, and Visual activities while
15 min	Independent writing—in a notebook, occasionally with partner or volunteer support, writes stories and illustrates. Practices strategy of the day.
10 min	Share out—in whole group or in partners/small groups, students share what they have practiced and what they have learned in writer’s workshop for the day.

Resources

The resources I have already begun to share with instructors at my school site include the reading’s list from Ed 605. The books I am most frequently using include Struggling Learners & Language Immersion Education, by Tara Fortune and Mandy R. Menke, and Freeman & Freeman’s text, Dual Language Essentials for Teachers and Administrators.

I also found CARLA’s website to be invaluable, along with the Center for Applied Linguistics. Both of these sites can be found on our class resource list document.

Hopes for Juliet’s Literacy development

I see Juliet as a future biliterate, bilingual adult. I imagine that she will continue to code switch but will become increasingly aware of it and become more creative and playful with it. I look forward to knowing Juliet when she is a young adult who is capable of playing with her languages purposefully.

Juliet's Reading Analysis

Child as a reader

Juliet loves to read. When I found her in the nurse’s office, on her way home ill, she was curled up on the cot with a pile of books. She had pulled them from the nurse’s stash and they were all in English, but she was busily searching through the pictures and inventing text/decoding what she could. She clearly knows that text carries meaning, and views books as tools for information and entertainment.

In her classroom Juliet is an active reader, and is equally likely to respond in small group, whole group, or 1:1 with a teacher. She often, as seen in her oral language sample, responds in a code-switching manner, intersentetially and tagging flipping between her English and Spanish channels. 

Proficiency level

All of Juliet’s literacy instction in Kindergarten is provided in Spanish, and so are her classroom assessments. When Juliet entered school she scored a 4 on the Concepts About Print assessment (conceptos del texto impreso in Spanish), and referred to quotations marks as “mystery clues.” By January she had met the end-of-year goal for the CAP of 18. She was able to instructionally read the SPLAA level 2 in November and by January was reading a level 3. 

I read with her in both Spanish and English, and noticed that she is reading at a Rigby Benchmarks level 3 or 4 instructionally in Spanish, and a level 2 or 3 in English. While she could comprehend and decode at these levels instructionally, she was much more likely to get frustrated on English language texts, and to insert or invent text. In Spanish she was more likely to attempt using a variety of cues and strategies, and to miscue on words she didn’t have orally. In English she was more likely to miscue on words with irregular phonetic transcription, even if they were very common words she had access to. I think this is because Juliet hasn’t done much learning in English literacy, and therefore only relies on meaning and structure to solve difficulties in English. She has fewer “fix-it” strategies in English, and monitors less consistently, even though her problem solving strategies are transferring between both languages. 

Strategies/cues (Comprehension, decoding, and linguistic resources)

In Juliet’s reading she often has a self correct rate of 1:3, which is good but not excellent. This reveals that in both languages she is consistently monitoring herself for meaning, especially because almost all of her Self Corrects (SC) relied on meaning and structure and not visual cues. Conversely, her errors tended to be based in Visual (V) information that was missed or misread most commonly. In English, however, this was due to not having the code for some phonics, especially initial consonant blends. One example was while reading the word “shoe” in Meg’s Messy Room, Juliet attempted as such: “/s/-/h/-/o/”. Likewise, when reading the word “on”, she attempted: “/oh/-/n/”, using the Spanish code for the ‘o’ vowel sound. In this instance, however, she was able to use meaning and structure to figure out that the word must be ‘on’, and self correct. Because she had no clue that s+h sounded /sh/, she wasn’t able to do so in the first attempt with “shoe”. 

Interestingly she not only applied the Spanish phonetic code to her English reading, but also Spanish words. When she arrived at the word “said” for the first tim, she guessed “saltó”, even thought that wouldn’t make sense within the context of the sentence, “Look at my messy room, “ said Meg.

In her Spanish reading Juliet was much more likely to error on gender and agreement visual cues. She often said “está” instead of “están”, and “manzanas amarillos” instead of “manzanas amarillas”and so forth. This shows me that her oral language code is still immature, although she uses multiple sources of meaning to problem solve text. She was likely, also, to decode a nonsense word in Spanish while over-relying on the visual cues. This tells me that Juliet knows that she can consistently solve words in Spanish with her phonics, and suggests that she is aware that sometimes Spanish words won’t make sense to her. For example, instead of reading “cuerno” (horn) she read “cu-re-no”, which isn’t a word. She was able to talk about what the pencil drew on the goat (a horn), but didn’t know that word. 

Juliet is a generally fluent reader, but more so in Spanish than in English. I could see her transferring her skills into her English attempts, but it was also clear that she has a stronger visual code and skills in Spanish, and this assisted her fluent and expressive reading in her second language.

Analysis of Juliet as a Writer

Summary of stage

Juliet is, according to the writing stages put forth by Rubin and Carlin, somewhere between a semi phonetic and a phonetic writer.  They define the semi phonetic stage as when a student, “understand(s) that there is a relationship between letters and sounds, yet [is] not able to match all the sounds with the letters.”  (p 729). The phonetic monolingual English writer, on the other hand, “is able to match most of the phonetic sounds to letters.” According to the authors the monolingual Spanish writer at this stage of development begins to write one symbol for each letter, rather than one sound for each syllable. Carlin and Rubin also state that the bilingual writer can do both of these things at the phonetic stage, and additionally begins to notice that words are transcribed uniquely in either language.

Juliet demonstrated a fairly consistent letter: sound usage, and clearly knows that you can transcribe sounds with symbols. She still doesn’t hear difficult sounds (such as ‘coredo’ for ‘corriendo’), which Rubin and Carlin state to be typical in both the semi-phonetic and phonetic stages. In Spanish she is not using one sound for each syllable, but in English she is likely to represent sounds with graphemes that are not representative of the sounds she is hearing. The reason I don’t think Juliet is a transitional writer yet is that she still isn’t applying rules from either language to spelling patterns, even though she has some sight words (‘the’ and ‘is’) in English, and uses conventions more consistently in Spanish.

Self as a writer

Juliet sees writing as a way to notate stories drawn and told. She is very comfortable with the draw-speak-write pattern of interaction, which she clearly uses in class. She doesn’t see writing as a means for communication yet, however, in the sense that we may expand or edit ideas to make them clearer for the audience. She was more interested in working through each word than in working out the ideas or the sentence.  

Problem solving attempts at difficulty

After she speaks her story, Juliet will say the words slowly, syllable-by-syllable, to hear the sounds. She will write the sounds in order left to right, and tends to hear both consonants and vowels equally. 

She had trouble hearing or transcribing vowel sounds in English, and often added an ‘i’ for unclear reasons. In her first English writing she wrote all the words with phonetic beginning, middles, and ends, and when she got to the word ‘I’, she put down a lower-case ‘I’. But she stopped, saying, “Wait…that doesn’t sound right.” She changed her writing by scratching out the letter and putting down, “ai”. This is a closer approximation in the Spanish phonetic code of an English sounds for ‘I’.

Inter-linguistic transfer

Juliet relied primarily on the Spanish phonetic code to transcribe English words. She may not have been explicitly aware of the fact that Spanish and English words are written differently, but her oral development is such that she knew which sounds to transcribe. This again points towards a phonetic speller, with hints of semi-phonetic. Her spelling approximations definitely used code from across the languages. Her word-boundary confusions may be related more to the concept about print of spacing than the oral development of discreet words in either language. Her codes in both languages are phonetic and don’t yet rely on generalized rules or sight words, with the notable exception of ‘the’ and ‘is’.

Notes/  observations

Juliet is a very creative story teller, and very excited to someday ride a horse (just like mommy!). She loved her dog Cherry very much, and was sad when he had to go to the vet. She demonstrated no oral code-switching during our writing time in English, but did code switch during our Spanish writing time. Her code is definitely more active in Spanish for transcription than in English, and she has more concepts about print accessible to her in Spanish as well. When we discussed the ideas of ‘sentences’, she didn’t know what I meant, but when we talked about ‘frases’ she understood.

Juliet is in a Spanish-only literacy instruction DLI setting, and I think her primary code for writing is therefore Spanish. She has obviously been exposed to English text and print, however, because she has acquired some sight words in English.

Juliet's Writing Samples

This is Juliet's Spanish writing sample. We did an interactive write, to tell stories about how Juliet wants to ride a horse. I drew the horse :)

This is Juliet's first English writing sample. She drew a picture of her dog, Cherry, and wrote "My dog got sick. I was sad."

I noticed that she wasn't using spaces or punctuation, and I wasn't sure if she was consistently using the 'i' sound as a Spanish grapheme. I asked her to write more, and this time we rehearsed orally first. I helped put in space markers.

Juliet said, "Cherry was a cute pup." I wondered if there was some inter-language transfer going on, so I asked Juliet to do a dictated writing.

I drew a flower, and asked her to write the sentence, "The blue flower is pretty". Her attempt is above.

Juliet's Oral Language Development

Juliet is  a complicated case of a journey to bilingualism: her DLI program at school is sequential, where she is only instructed in Spanish literacy, but at home she receives support in both English and Spanish reading and writing, and has been developing speaking and listening skills in both languages her entire life. I think after hearing the deep integration of both languages into her social language that she is closer to a simultaneous bilingual than a sequential one.  While I think Juliet is developing in a multi-faceted way, analysis of her language revealed English to be “dominant”. She has more control and linguistic complexity in English than Spanish, and defaults to English to explain complicated ideas.

In the classroom, Juliet is likely to respond to people in the language she is addressed in. When her DLI classroom teacher spoke to her, she would answer in Spanish, even if the reply was, “No sé”. When addressed by a classmate in English she would respond as spoken to, except when she would attempt to translate to the other language on behalf of a peer. Twice while translating—once from English to Spanish, then again from Spanish to English—I observed Juliet code switch mid-translation (“She wants you to put down the marcadora”, and then, “dame the marker”).  These intra-sentential switches were common in Juliet’s language, with both peers and adults. It was witnessed in purely social language, but primarily in settings where one or more school-related vocabulary word was being used. In fact it was hard to get a “pure” language sample from Juliet. In every language sample (accept one)I took Juliet displayed code-switching, linguistic blending, copying or semantic extensions.  

The language sample I was able obtain almost entirely in English involved a lot of modeling in that language. After “switching” our English hat, Juliet describes her drawing with great linguistic complexity, varied sentence structure, and technical language related to the content area. She qualifies as a level 6 because of her Native English Language label (she is not qualified as an ESL student), and demonstrates abilities as such. While the one sample I found was free of linguistic transfer, most of the samples I obtained were peppered with individual Spanish words or phrases ("We don't [clean the room] because we have to, we do it so we can get un minuto mas. And if we do it, if we get to the alfombra, you have to give us un minuto mas"). This indicates to me that in some moments, Juliet has the Spanish vocabulary more close at hand than the English. I think this was especially true in talking about writing and classroom vocabulary (the colors of her drawing, for example).

Juliet’s Spanish language sample shows a willingness to use the language when vocabulary is readily available and she is in a familiar context (colors, animals, directions to do next). With me, she wasn’t as open to producing language in Spanish, but we only met a few weeks ago. With her peers, her classroom teacher, and especially in response to Spanish prompts, she is more likely to try out her Spanish. When she uses her Spanish she often copies syntax from English. She shows partial grasp of gender and plural agreement ("este" for "estes", "la palabras", "la osito"). She also used improper verb conjugation occasionally (tieno/tengo, esto/estoy). Her discourse patterns stayed fairly child-like and playful (lots of "ah-ha!' noises and such), but otherwise typically English-speaking and linear. She was likely to swap single phrases or words intra-sententially between languages, especially after hearing the vocabulary used in a model. In spontaneous discourse, Juliet would do the same ("En Rango. Es una, es una, es una movie."). She often repeats her words a few times before switching back to English, indicating that she is actively searching her Spanish vocabulary ("No es malo, pero es also, es also--como se dice mayor? El alcalde es malo, too.)

Her attempts only revealed one shot at an extended sentence, and her vocabulary stayed high-frequency and concrete. She was able to follow multi-step directions in Spanish but categorization was difficult. For these reasons I think of Juliet as a level 2, beginning, Spanish speaker.  Her language control did feel very fluent (again--when the complexity and vocab were well known, and with peers or trusted community members), however, leading me to believe that Juliet is on the edge of a level 3 language development level.

El Desarrollo de Juliet

I present my second focus student, Juliet (also a pseudonym). She's a gregarious, talkative, and very intelligent kindergartner whose first language is English. While she is raised in a home where English is the primary language she practices speaking in Spanish with her mother, a bilingual teacher in the district.

Both her home-practice and the quality of the student language in her DLI environment are apparent in listening to Juliet speak. She uses English and Spanish with confidence and often knows when to use each code without asking. She loves horses and playing with friends, is highly social, and adept and reading, writing, and math. Her inquisitive nature during Science and Social Studies might indicate a future in law or another field where problem solving and questioning are central.

El Desarrollo de Ana Litzy

Déjenme presentarles con Ana Litzy, mi estudiante de enfoque por la clase del desarrollo de lectoescritura bilingue. Así no se llama la niña de verdad, por supuesto, pero he eligido su apodo por alumnas de que me pone a recordar.

Es una estudiante bastante social y animada, a quien le gusta su clase de Kinder la *mayoria* del tiempo. A la Ana Litzy le encanta bailar y charlar, pero cuando llega el momento de leer o escribir a veces no quiere. No le costó mucho para aprender los sonidos de las letras en español, ni tampoco las sílabas, pero integrar la información visual con lo sintáctico y el significado le está costando un poco. En su primer año de la escuela, en este tercer cuarto del año, está leyendo un nivel 2 en la evaluación 'SPLAA'. Este dato le pone de nivel de caleficacióon 'progresando' por el momento.

Su programa de enseñanza es en una clase de doble inmersión, tipo 90/10; 90% de su dia instructional se presenta en español, y el 10% en inglés.

Gwen's Biliteracy Developmnt Blog

Hello, friends!

Glad you could make it to my Biliteracy Development Blog. I'm excited to be learning with you.