Educator Resources | We Give Books
A great way to get books for your students to help prevent the Summer reading slide! I wonder if they have books in Spanish?
Bilingual Resources for Teachers
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Se termino el año escolar
El año escolar esta por terminarse y mis estudiantes me preguntan si van a poder regresar a la escuela durante el verano. Se me hace chistoso que quieran, que rueguen, regresar a la escuela durante el verano. ¿Deberas, durante el verano? La mayoría de las veces, esperamos que los niños están desesperados por irse de la escuela, olvidar los libros y sus metas escolares. No es por decir que no quieran o no tengan metas, simplemente es que la verdad es que los niños son niños y los cielos azules, las albercas y el sol ardiente por tan caliente que este, nos gana. Nada mas me sorprende. Claro que yo también estoy lista para las ¨vacaciones¨ de verano. Pero la diferencia es que me ilumina que mis estudiantes sinceramente demuestran que su educación les importa.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Libros para ninos
http://www.colorincolorado.org/leer/infantiles/
Aqui hay una lista de libros infantiles para maestros de escuelas primarias. Tenemos que promover la lectura durante el verano!
Aqui hay una lista de libros infantiles para maestros de escuelas primarias. Tenemos que promover la lectura durante el verano!
Launching Summer Reading
Launching Summer Reading
We need to get rid of the summer reading slump and find ways to get our students to read. Click on the link above and Donalyn Miller provides some wonderful ideas to get students to read over the summer by having students make book recommendations, creating a reading list, and holding a book swap. Our school is planning on holding a book swap or two this summer. I'm really excited about that!
I'm also planning to provide students with a summer reading list created by students (book recommendations) and showing students book trailers to get them hyped up about books. See the following link for book trailers provided by Scholastic Kids on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC1B08FBB22B50642. I will also use Edmodo to promote summer reading as much as I can. http://www.edmodo.com
We need to get rid of the summer reading slump and find ways to get our students to read. Click on the link above and Donalyn Miller provides some wonderful ideas to get students to read over the summer by having students make book recommendations, creating a reading list, and holding a book swap. Our school is planning on holding a book swap or two this summer. I'm really excited about that!
I'm also planning to provide students with a summer reading list created by students (book recommendations) and showing students book trailers to get them hyped up about books. See the following link for book trailers provided by Scholastic Kids on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC1B08FBB22B50642. I will also use Edmodo to promote summer reading as much as I can. http://www.edmodo.com
4th Annual Book-a-Day
4th Annual Book-a-Day
So last summer I joined the Book-a-Day challenge and I will share with you that it was the most rewarding experience I have had as a teacher. I took advantage of reading a book every day, including picture books, chapter books (that counted as several days' reading), nonfiction books, graphic novels, and a variety of other genres. I read books in English and books in Spanish. Books, books, books! This was wonderful for me AND for my children. The best part was that I was reading to them and at the same time familiarizing myself with a plethora of books that my students read. Over the summer, I frequented the public library, the nearest Barnes and Noble and Half Price books to browse books and choose books that I know my students have read or might like to read. I was also able to download digital books for free from the Barnes and Noble website and borrow digital books from our public library. Being able to read and get to know a a variety of books has become an important habit that has forever changed me as a reader. This year I will again join the Book-A-Day challenge and I encourage you to join too!
So last summer I joined the Book-a-Day challenge and I will share with you that it was the most rewarding experience I have had as a teacher. I took advantage of reading a book every day, including picture books, chapter books (that counted as several days' reading), nonfiction books, graphic novels, and a variety of other genres. I read books in English and books in Spanish. Books, books, books! This was wonderful for me AND for my children. The best part was that I was reading to them and at the same time familiarizing myself with a plethora of books that my students read. Over the summer, I frequented the public library, the nearest Barnes and Noble and Half Price books to browse books and choose books that I know my students have read or might like to read. I was also able to download digital books for free from the Barnes and Noble website and borrow digital books from our public library. Being able to read and get to know a a variety of books has become an important habit that has forever changed me as a reader. This year I will again join the Book-A-Day challenge and I encourage you to join too!
The Next Chapter
The Next Chapter
If you don't know who Donalyn Miller is, you MUST get acquainted with her name, especially if you are a reading teacher.
If you don't know who Donalyn Miller is, you MUST get acquainted with her name, especially if you are a reading teacher.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
The Bilingual Brain
It is amazing to think that from the moment you are born or even prior to that when you are in the womb, humans are able to listen to and recognize sounds. Even more amazingly, as an infant, we can babble more than 100 phonemes. As parents react to the phonemes, the ones that are reacted to are the ones that are more pronounced and reinforced.
I've read that in bilinguals, task-switching is common and in fact bilinguals are good at. The famous Stroop test demonstrates that when monolinguals are presented with for example the color red, but the ink is in a different color, that they take longer to respond when compared to their bilingual counterpart.
As a bilingual myself, speaking English and Spanish, I have always wondered about how my brain functions and how sometimes I can switch languages, or even translate phrases into Spanish as I am reading something in English. People always ask me if I dream in English or in Spanish. My response is that usually I do dream in Spanish. I don't know if that is typical of bilinguals to dream in their native or dominant language. But I do. I also feel that I behave differently depending on whether I speak English or Spanish. I think in both languages. I express my thoughts differently in each language depending on who I am communicating with. Regardless, I feel that switching thoughts and expressions and languages can sometimes be complicated. Sometimes I cannot think of a word in English, but I know it in Spanish and vice versa. Usually, that's when I get nervous in the middle of a conversation and want to be swallowed by the earth.
I learned that not every study out there finds benefits to bilingualism. A study previously conducted recently by psychologists at Concordia University in Montreal studied 168 children ages 1 and 2 years old being raised by bilingual parents. They basically found that children in the younger half of that cohort had smaller comprehension vocabularies than monolingual children. The older half of the sample group had smaller vocabularies or could pronounce less words. They found that the result of this came from parents mixing their languages when speaking to their children, choosing the words they feel the children will have a less difficult time understanding. As we know, code switching or Spanglish inhibits language development to a certain extent. Although, bilinguals are at a disadvantage when affected by the language confusion, children do eventually catch up.
Either way, I am convinced that being bilingual has its advantages. Early on the brain begins to prune unused circuits and myelination occurs to make the brain more efficient and stronger. Meanwhile, the brain exercises instantaneous processing, deliberate focus of attention, and pattern recognition to decode language. The bilingual brain is incredibly amazing! Growing up bilingual is brainpower.
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