Reflections on Efraín's Biliteracy Development

      I classified Efraín as a level 2 (beginning) on the Speaking Rubric of the WIDA Consortium for both English and Spanish although he has more control in the former and is rapidly improving his oral language skills in this language. In English he occasionally code-switches—a common, natural and a true sign of bilinguals (Beeman, 2009), but in his Spanish language usage blending is much more prevalent with the three types of code-switching (Beeman, 2009) evident in his Spanish oral discourse. An example of Efraín’s tag-switching is seen in his answer to the question “¿Que hizo la mujer con los perros. Explícame lo que hace ella.” (The woman worked at a veterinarian’s office). “She's got those thingies here (indicating a stethoscope) and she want to check to see if los perros respiran.” An illustration of his use of inter-sentential is seen in his answer to what types of jobs there are at school: “Hay trabajos como maestros, la principal, and the man who works in the library y la mujer en la oficina.” Finally, intra-sentential code-switching is obvious when he answers a question about his father’s employment: “El trabaja en el centro y hace wings de pollo and nachos. He works en un restaurante during the nighttime.”

     Efraín's English writing sample best matches the description of the phonetic stage of writing development in contrast to his Spanish written discourse that I classified as in the semiphonetic stage (Rubin and Carlan, 2005). I did not see any evidence of code-switching in Efraín’s writing when compared to his speaking, most likely because he had much more time to plan, write and edit his narrative example I analyzed for this class. His writing sample exhibited some spelling approximations to reflect cross-language transfer by recording sounds using limited knowledge of the language code: “pepl” (people), “bech” (beach), “voleball” (volleyball), “bords” (boards), and“lif” (life).

     Writing in Spanish is a struggle for Efraín due to his lack of practice and he seemed confused when I asked him to write a short paragraph of five sentences. It took him nearly thirty minutes to complete it. He used English code to spell Spanish words (but not vice versa) in the case of “me” for “mi,” “is” for “es,” and “pader” (padre) for “father.

     Efraín’s reading skills in English have improved greatly since the beginning of the year but he continues to struggle with comprehension. He can answer one word questions, (e.g., “Where do birds build their nests? What animal on the farm gives milk?”), but stumbles when asked to summarize what he has read. As an emergent reader he is in the early stages of developing his ability to infer meaning from the text. He waits for my prompts to comment on his reading and he does not make spontaneous comments while he goes through the text.

     His Spanish language reading skills are much less developed. He told me his mother will occasionally read to him in Spanish at home but he himself does not like to do so. This is understandable since his exposure to Spanish texts is limited. At the beginning of the year I would ask comprehension questions in Spanish (after reading a text in English) to verify if he understood what I asked, but I never used a text in Spanish as part of our guided reading group.

     As a simultaneous bilingual student born in the US of immigrant Mexican parents, Efraín retains his Spanish-language oral skills through communication at home with his family while developing and rapidly improving his English language skills through his schooling in an English-medium classroom and conversations with his older brother and friends. Due to a limited exposure to written text in Spanish and no instruction in writing Efraín’s Spanish language skills are weak when compared to his English language abilities. Since he is currently not enrolled in a bilingual or dual-immersion educational program it is unlikely that his reading and writing skills in Spanish will improve unless there is a change of programming at his current school to include Spanish language literacy skills or a concerted effort by his family or others to assist him in developing further his Spanish-language reading and writing skills. Another possibility might be a Spanish language class for native speakers in either middle or high school although those programs that intend to develop technologies and resources for Spanish-speaking students’ learning of reading and writing in their home language—critical skills for these students’ general education—are few in number (Potowski, 2006). Nonetheless, as the number of simultaneous bilinguals increase it is reasonable to expect an increased interest and desire for these types of language classes geared toward bilingual students.

Instructional Plan

      I work with Efraín primarily during two segments of the Balanced Literary curriculum: the reading workshop (guided reading) and the writing workshop. Research has shown that as students increase their oral language proficiency they simultaneously increase reading and writing proficiency and conversely as they increase their reading and writing proficiency, there is a similar increase in oral language proficiency (Barone & Xu, 2008).

     For Efraín’s reading instruction in reading I plan on continuing to build his vocabulary and phonemic awareness skills. Since he is in my reading group (one of two students) I have the discretion to choose the texts. I try to use at least fifty percent nonfiction texts. His last assessment rated him at level 10 but I am certain he has increased at least one level. Although he is behind his most of classmates in reading, this is not unusual for an ELL. Teachers should anticipate that learning to read in a language still being acquired will take longer than for students learning to read in their maternal language (Steinhoff, 2008).

     During the guided reading group, about 30 minutes, I break down the time segment into the following ways: Daily sight-word review, introduction of new text (1^st day) and new vocabulary from the book, teaching point, word-solving strategies, word study, and guided writing (2^nd day).

     For the daily sight-word review, I take about 2-3 minutes to review high-frequency words. I found that using whiteboards is quicker than magnetic letters. The students write down 3-5 words as I say them and use them in a sentence. I provide a visual link with a known word when appropriate (“Where has here in it. They has the in it”). I intervene if Efraín writes the word incorrectly.

     For the next few minutes I introduce the new text that includes the names of the characters and brief description of the problem. For any words that he might have trouble decoding I write them on a whiteboard so he can see the unusual spelling. (“This word may be difficult for you. The word is special. Repeat it now.”). At this time Efraín also does a quick picture walk through the book.

     For the next ten minutes or so, Efraín reads independently and softly to himself. I use appropriate prompts and coaching as necessary. This moves nicely into a teaching point where I have to continually ask myself “What does Efraín need to learn next?” whether it be self-monitoring, decoding, fluency or comprehension. Efraín needs particular help with the latter. Strategies that seem to work particularly well with him include beginning-middle-end, making predictions, problem-solution and character feelings.

     The last ten minutes of day one are spent on word study. I focus on blends and the silent e rule by using magnetic letters and analogy charts.

     The last activity of day 2 is guided writing. The two procedures used are (B-M-E) Beginning-Middle-End (B-M-E) and Somebody-Wanted-But-So (S-W-B-S). In B-M-E I have Efraín write 3-5 sentences describing something that happened at the beginning of the text, the next sentence or two describes something that happened in the middle, and the last sentence describes what happened at the end. I have Efraín orally rehearse his sentences with me before he writes them down. With S-W-B-S he uses a one-sentence summary for each of the following: Somebody—who is the story about? Wanted—what did the character want? But—what happened? So—how did it end? What happened next?

      During the writing block, I focus on the following areas with Efraín: writing behavior, composing, comprehension, and conventions. For writing behavior Efraín will work on writing more complex high frequency words (because, once, knew), break multi-syllabic words into parts and record new words in parts, and use transitional and/or conventional spelling for most words. For composing we will work on using the rereading strategy (phrases, words, word) as needed to help with writing a meaningful narrative or fictional story. This step is particularly important because I am working with Efraín to continually edit his work by reminding him to ask himself “Does this make sense to me?” Comprehension involves making certain that his writing reflects understanding of the prompt, incorporating a writing vocabulary that reflects attention to reading, and using vocabulary appropriate for the topic. Finally, with conventions, I will work with Efraín on rereading his writing (again!) and thinking about his end punctuation along with capitalizing sentence beginnings and proper names.

     If during writing time he gets “writer's block,” what I have found to be helpful is to ask him what he wants to write about and have him tell me orally. I tell him to use either English or Spanish, whichever he feels most comfortable using. I retell him what I heard and then say “That sounds great. Write that down.” I have found this to be particularly helpful with ELLs. Although his writing skills in Spanish are not very developed I also encourage him to write any words in Spanish if he does not know their English equivalents in order to keep his writing moving. Early writing among bilingual children provides many insights to teachers on their understanding of language and the writing process (Rubin & Carlan, 2005).

     I anticipate that Efraín will continue to approve in all areas of literacy as has been the case since I started working with him in September. A little “aha moment” occurred the other day when he looked over at his classmate's writing (a native English speaker) and politely informed him “that's not how you spell thin. It is spelled t-h-e-n.” I have seen his confidence grow as his language skills develop and I look forward to continuing to work with him.