Building a Bridge 

Several people have asked me to break down the process of how my Spanish teaching partner – Bebi (or Señorita Yossen) – and I plan for and implement a week of language transfer and contrastive analysis, also known as the Bridge, in our two-teacher model. I hope this helps!

Here’s a secret – it doesn’t happen on the Friday before.

Here we are! I like to include pictures of Bebi and me when appropriate, because I like to get to know you! Here we are on Halloween this year. I am lucky to have such a fabulous colleague!

It has taken us five years to get to this point – and it continues to morph, improve, and tweak according to our growing competence and the needs of our students. We want you to know that we had to start somewhere, and that change over time has led us to where we are today: far from perfect but definitely more effective.

Each summer we take a look at our Year at a Glance. We map out our units according to how long each will take and make them fit into our school calendar. While we do this, we match up the end of our units so that we are doing a Bridge Week at the same time. For example, because Bebi teaches Social Studies in Spanish to kindergarten and I teach Science in English to these same kindergarten students, we make sure that her Communities unit will end at the same time as my Push and Pull science unit. The Bridges must occur once all of our content has been taught and the summative assessment has taken place, so the timing is really key.  (While we do like our units to end at the same time, it’s important to understand that this isn’t critical for successful Bridges!!  What is important is that each Bridge occur after content has been taught in the language of instruction!)

Here is a snapshot of our Year at a Glance. If you look closely, our Bridge Units align to occur the same week, at the end of our content units. It doesn’t have to be that precise, but it works well for our groups to have official “Bridge Weeks” in both classes.

At the beginning of each unit, we review our key vocabulary and phrases that will be introduced, taught, and practiced in the beginning of the unit (oracy building), and reinforced throughout the unit. We already have our units planned out using the Biliteracy Unit Framework; samples can be found on www.teachingforbiliteracy.com/bufs. Each year, however, we make small changes to our units. One of the changes we have been zeroing in on this year is making sure our Bridge weeks have a clear metalinguistic focus and extension using the transferred vocabulary in literacy-focused standards.

As we get closer to the Bridge week, we make a point to get together and review the key vocabulary and phrases for each unit. Our conversation goes something like this:

What was the TPR that you ended up using (because sometimes it changes when the kids come up with something better!)?

Did any of the key phrases change or become more emphasized?

Will the vocabulary we talked about when planning still work for the Bridge metalinguistic focus and/or extension activity, or does that need to change?

Then I have my Spanish lessons. What does this word/phrase mean? And how do I pronounce it? Bebi helps me practice my Spanish and I make my very official cheat sheet.

Yes, my official cheat sheet is a post-it. I write down the planned Spanish terms for the upcoming Bridge with the English equivalent of any words I may need help with. I already knew cabeza and boca, and abdomen and antenas are cognates, so that was helpful!

I help her with any unfamiliar English words.  Then, looking at the Spanish and English words side by side, we discuss our metalinguistic focus. What would work with these words or phrases? What have you been noticing in their writing or speaking that may need direct instruction or reinforcement? For example, as we talked about vocabulary for a recent Bridge, Bebi noticed the opportunity to teach articles (el, la) in Spanish because the words lent to that focus (CCSS Standard: L.K.1g). It is a difference between English and Spanish that needs to be taught- our students were leaving out the articles in their Spanish journals and this was the perfect chance for her to teach that part of Spanish linguistics. Pages 155-165 of Teaching for Biliteracy – called “How Spanish Works” – is a great reference for the metalinguistic focus, and remember that if you are a Common Core State Standards (CCSS) state, the language standards for your grade level are also a great place to find ideas for the metalinguistic focus. You can find the English and Spanish CCSS side-by-side through this link, which can be very helpful when you and your partner plan for these activities.

Here is a screen shot from the kindergarten English/Spanish CCSS. You can see that the Spanish Language Arts standards that differ from English LA standards are blue.

At this point we are ready: We have our list of words/phrases, we planned our contrastive analysis/metalinguistic focus in both languages, and we planned our extension activities in both languages, all based off of our grade-level standards. Our metalinguistic focuses are different from each other’s – while she and the students will be looking at articles with the words on their Bridge list from English to Spanish about weather (L.K.1g – NOT an English standard!), the students and I will analyze at the sounds the letter a makes in both languages on our Bridge list from Spanish to English about family (RF.K.2).

While there are several ways you can plan for extensions, we like to have our extension activities different from each other. We often revisit those standards throughout the year in both languages (such as the various genres of writing, which you don’t just teach once and leave alone!), but we like to teach them at different times so that our students get a clear picture of the differences in writing in either language. For this unit, Bebi’s extension activity was opinion writing and speaking about weather with a focus on using articles before nouns (CCSS Standards: W.K.1, SL.K. 4, 6) while mine was writing an informative book about family members and varying sentence beginnings (W.K.2, L.K.6).

When I say ready, I mean that we are planned. 🙂 We now bring the kids into it. The Friday before our Bridge week, we ask the kids: “What should we teach Señorita Yossen about _______?” I elicit ideas from the students, but secretly I am trying to get those key phrases and vocabulary words that Bebi and I already talked about. For the most part the students come up with the appropriate list, and they feel like they generated it. I write in purple, because we decided that at our school, English is written in purple and Spanish is written in green. The same day, while they are in Spanish, Bebi is generating the list for me. She is writing in green (Spanish) all the great “ideas” that the kids will teach ME about family in Spanish.

At the end of the day on Friday, we exchange the lists.

I now have a list with only Spanish words, and she has a list with only English words.

Here’s a Bridge list I got from Bebi- ready for the class to teach me on Monday.

There are other ways that the Bridge week can unfold, but this is how it works for us. On Monday of the Bridge week, we each have the class “teach” us the meaning of these words that we have written in the other language. They love it! They are so empowered to help us become more bilingual. The whole time, I have my cheat sheet that Bebi helped me create (remember the fancy Post-It?). It has the words, I practiced the pronunciation, and I have the translation. This way if the students are unable to come up with the transfer on their own, I can help with the appropriate academic vocabulary using TPR to help reinforce what they learned in Spanish. After all, they most likely have not heard many of these academic terms before in this other language because they have only been learning it in Spanish!

We go over the initial transfer of vocabulary, and we practice. Then we practice again. And again! The kids read the list together, using the TPR in both languages, and they use the vocabulary and phrases in complete sentences. Once students are comfortable with the words in both languages, we begin learning about the metalinguistic focus related to the topic (based off of standards). As we progress throughout the week, we continuously refer back to the Bridge list, and we create an anchor chart of examples of the metalinguistic focus. We have posters on cognates, letters that sound the same, letters that sound different in English and Spanish, vowel sounds, the sounds that c makes, and those charts will continue to grow in both variety and content as the kids add to them throughout the year with examples they find in their reading, writing, and listening in both classes.

Here is a Bridge anchor chart AFTER the first graders transferred the vocabulary and found some examples of the letter c in both English and Spanish.

Here is the metalinguistic anchor chart we created during that Bridge week – students have been adding their own ideas of the sounds c makes, and will continue to add their own examples of the c sound throughout the school year.

Here is a Bridge anchor chart AFTER the kindergartners transferred the vocabulary and began discussing the sounds a makes in English and Spanish.

Here is the metalinguistic anchor chart we started about vowel sounds from our Family Bridge. We will continue to talk about how vowels vary between English and Spanish as the year progresses and students will begin to add their own examples!

The Bridge can be a challenge to plan for, but it is well worth it in the end. Our students benefit so much from the contrastive analysis.   Their brains are constantly trying to figure out the similarities and differences between the languages they know, and the direct instruction and application of this skill helps them make sense of this complicated process.

We have found that the Bridge is an essential process to the development of bilingual and biliterate individuals as they expand their knowledge from one language to the other and make connections between the languages. Don’t be intimidated by not being fluent in the other language! With time, good planning, and a teammate who supports you in YOUR language learning, you can build bridges stronger than you ever imagined!

Next time: More about how we use those metalinguistic anchor charts throughout the year. In the meantime, let me know how your Bridges are coming along!