Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi:

I have two young children who are bilingual (English, French). If they speak well, reading, writing and spelling seems completely out of reach without significant effort (at least two extra hours of work per day).

I have started to use this tool this year,

http://www.flashreader.org

which offers some bilingual teaching capability.

Do you have any experience in helping a child learn reading, writing and spelling in a second language? Not only spending 2 hours a day sounds difficult when you are a working parent, it might turn off the child completely. Is Saturday school a good solution?

thanks,

JJ-

I have been using a new program in my classroom, and with my 5 year old at home, that I learned about at a conference called LoopWriter. It is a card game that you create by typing in questions and answers. The cards layout is different in that the answer is at the top of the card, the question at the bottom, therefore as you answer the questions correctly, your card game makes a "loop" by the last card's question being answered by the first card. The decks can be written in Spanish, English, French or German AND you can import graphics into it. I would strongly recommend this.

I created a deck for my 5 1/2 yr. old daughter that had animal pictures imported as the question followed by the Spanish word for the animal as the answer. She LOVES playing these. You can go to www.LoopWriter.com to find out more.

Test scores in my class have improved since using these for review before test time. You can play them in small groups, or as an individual. I make a "bank" of games that the kids can check out and take home for reviewing with their parents.

Good luck!
Amy

Hi,
my eight yrs old daughter speaks Italian and English - English is her second language. I did not want her to learn how to read and write in English to avoid confusion with her first language. Also, I did not want to put too much pressure on her.
I bought some children's books with CD and she used to listen to them almost every day. Eventually she learned how to read all by herself!
As for writing, I have found a pen pal for her - it's a ten yrs old boy who lives in the US. She is absoutely thrilled at the idea of having a pen pal and her writing has remarkably improved in a very short time.

kind regards

Paola