RESOURCES

Invitations for further engagement with chapter ideas

1. If you were to share the ideas presented within this book with the administrators and the teachers at your school, what are some questions and concerns you anticipate they would have? How would you respond?


2. Consider the experience of emergent bilinguals in your school or in a school to which you have access. Identify opportunities for change, advocacy and action toward translanguaging pedagogy. What would you change and why? Whom would you seek as allies and how would you pursue the changes you would like to see?


3. Form a study group with colleagues who want to try translanguaging pedagogy in their classroom.  Form a learning community in your school to read about, discuss and gradually implement translanguaging in your teaching and collaborative work. 
   

 project ideas

Using Google Classroom and Google Tools

Usε Google Classroom and Google Tools to build a “base of operations” for EBs and translanguaging classrooms.
Explore Read & Write for Google Chrome. 

• Consider how this type of assistive technology could help open the door to a translanguaging classroom. 
  
• Write a lesson plan using this technology, which encourages students to explore and gather information from numerous sources in various languages.
  

What if there is no translation?

There is tendency to ask EB students to rely on translators (human or otherwise) when learning new material.  However as experienced bilinguals know well, translation is a complex and nuanced activity.

• Read the article “68 Brilliant New Words We Should Add to a Dictionary.”  Though humorous, it brings to light the very real problem sometimes faced by EBs when a term or phrase simply does not have a word-for-word translation into English or vice-versa. 
• Look on the internet for words or terms that have been poorly translated or ideas that have been lost in translation. 
• Using idioms, metaphors or false cognates, produce a multimodal presentation to help students understand the dangers of relying on word-to-word translations.
  
• Invite students to find metaphors metaphors in different languages to express the same meanings, for instance,   “ as poor as a beggar”  in Chinese  vs. “as poor as a church mouse” in English;   etc.    This project can help students realize the complexities of language, the challenges of translation and that language is culturally laden.
  

explore Google Translate and the affordances and limitations of modern translating technologies

Together with your students, try to use Google Translate  to translate your writing into a different language, or to each other’s home language.  This project helps students to appreciate different languages but also to consider the affordances and limitations for modern translation technologies.

Imagine the power of numbers

Numbers and the way different languages formulate numbers has an intrinsic impact on how students understand number sense. 

• Using Google, find the exact wording of numbers from 1 to 100 in 10 different languages. 
  
• Take note of the differences in how numbers are named. 
  
• Analyze how the naming of numbers might impact the way speakers of those languages view the relationship between numbers.  For example,
  
  • is there a consistent naming system for the multiples of ten? 
    
  • How are the intervening numbers between these multiples named? 
    
  • Is there a consistent method?
    

Imagine the power of words

Languages often have various differences in the specificity which they name things that are important or influential to the culture.  The often cited “50 words for snow in Inuit” is one example.  Using websites such as European Day of Languages, prepare a word wall of unique words.

 resources for further Reading/viewing

1. García, O., & Li, W. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
   
2. García, O., & Kleyn, T. (2016). Translanguaging with multilingual students: Learning from classroom moments. New York, NY: Routledge.