Today, since 90%+ of my students are native speakers of Spanish, we did a Reading Option A format in three languages instead of two. A volunteer translator followed my lead with the English with a (beautiful sounding) Spanish track.
Instantly, the kids’ minds starting running the French by their first language, hearing but not latching on to the English, which I could tell was only really used by the non-native speaker kids. The Spanish track provided a level of interest and learning via reading that I have never seen. And the book was Pauvre Anne! They were into it because they could do it.
What to draw from this? I surmise that a lot of my kids were previously listening to the “group” translation into English without learning much French because their English just wasn’t strong enough to handle two new languages at the same time.
Thus, when schools with large Spanish speaking populations overload native Spanish speakers with concepts in math or science, etc, using English that they think is working, they may want to rethink that. They may want to rethink how they present the material.
Of course, the SIOP model is there, but that model is too abstract, based on too many different theoreticians. There is only one chapter in the main SIOP book on “Comprehensible Input”/Krashen that was lame and revealed an astonishing lack of understanding of what Krashen is really saying. Of course that is nothing new – the whole world does that. It has become a sport.
The SIOP model can’t really work, therefore, in my opinion, because most teachers don’t appreciate the enormity of what they are asking these kids to do and even the most accomplished SIOP trained teacher can’t do much. I was guilty of this and didn’t even know it until today. Using English in reading classes to teach French to kids whose first language is Spanish. I learned that that is a pretty dumb thing to try to do and yet I have been doing it all year.
Who benefits from the sheltered instruction provide in the SIOP model? The SIOP Institute does. Do the kids benefit? Not really. But that is what we are all about, right? Corporate triumphs that lead to significant wealth for corporations, and great failures in helping real kids with real needs. Same old, same old.
Once again, echoing many, I express my appreciation that this PLC is private so that I can say things like this without fear of offending experts in language acquisition, and, of course, offending those people who sell SIOP books by the hundreds to schools, none of which are taken seriously anyway because of the primary workload of all teachers.
When Spanish was used as a principle translation device today to teach French, the pride in Spanish language was visible and palpable on every kid’s face. The few kids in each class who do not have Spanish were clearly out of the loop. A side benefit, of course, was that the kids were learning a ton of English as I droned on and on (I did say the book was Pauvre Anne, didn’t I?) in the din of English before the Spanish reader took over. But so different this way! This was comprehensible input in three languages!
You learn something new every day. I can see David’s mind going all over the place on this one, but he knows, it is obvious, that if there is more than one language group there in my classroom, of course, this three language format could never work. But man, when they all speak Spanish, and they all descend on French with that Spanish, with some English in there, look out!