Language Builds Language: How supporting a child’s home language can positively affect literacy

By: Jillian Minarich

“Is this Spanish?” Jocelyn asked me as we flipped to the next page in our leveled text.

“Yes,” I answered. Jocelyn highlighted it blue.

As we finished identifying all of the Spanish text in the book, I told Jocelyn, “Now, this is your book to keep. We read the English text here at school today, and you can read the Spanish at home with Mom.” With a big smile, Jocelyn ran off to put the text in her backpack. I sat back in my chair with tears brimming; Jocelyn has just read for the first time.

Meeting the challenge

Jocelyn is an energetic, artistic five year old who comes from a Spanish-only speaking home. The school where she is a student in my kindergarten class, the Atlanta Area School for the Deaf (AASD), is a day school for deaf and hard of hearing students who live in the approximately thirty counties surrounding Atlanta, Georgia. Jocelyn has been attending AASD since she turned three and has made remarkable progress in her behavior and communication. Since meeting her in August, I have been struggling with how to help her progress in the areas of language and literacy as well. Lucky for me, I had the amazing support and skills of the staff at AASD to help.

In the late fall, a co-worker and member of our Accessible Materials Project (AMP), a program funded through AASD’s federal School Improvement 1003(g) Grant charged with the task of making English text materials and the literacy skills they support accessible to deaf and hard of hearing students through ASL translation, invited me to attend a community meeting discussing working with immigrant families and their children. Inspired by the meeting’s messages that language builds language and supporting a child’s home language supports their language and literacy development at school, I began to think about Jocelyn’s tri-lingual experiences: English and ASL at school and Spanish at home. I knew if I wanted to help Jocelyn build her English literacy and ASL language skills, I had to support her Spanish language acquisition as well. By making Spanish more accessible to Jennifer, I could open the door to new home routines that included her, such as reading with a parent, and not only support her literacy development but her social-emotional health as well (Day Parlakian, 2004).

At my parent-teacher conference with Jocelyn’s mother at the start of the school year, I discovered that Jocelyn’s mother worked with Jocelyn in the evenings teaching her written Spanish words for items in their home. She asked if it was “alright” for her to teach Jocelyn Spanish, or if it would confuse her English acquisition. Recalling my graduate school and bilingual studies, I assured her that the time she spent with her daughter and the focus on letters, words and reading (regardless of the language) would have a positive impact on Jocelyn’s learning. I also promised her that I would help Jennifer understand the difference between English and Spanish and work with both languages at school.

Fueled by a promise to Jocelyn’s mother and the knowledge that language, in any form, would help Jocelyn reach her reading and language goals, I set to work figuring out how I could support Jocelyn’s language learning at home.

Spanish, English and ASL – How can they work together?

My first thought was to go to AMP to see how I could use technology to bring ASL into Jocelyn’s home. The AMP team was able to help me create an ASL vocabulary DVD that had both an English and Spanish component. We videotaped my students signing their vocabulary words while, on the screen beneath them, the English or Spanish word appeared. The week after sending this home with Jocelyn, I asked our staff Spanish interpreter to follow-up with Jocelyn’s mother to see if she found the DVD helpful. Jocelyn’s mother was ecstatic about the DVD and asked when the next would be sent home. I was ecstatic I had found at least one successful school-to-home language tool.

My second thought was to ensure that Jocelyn understood the differences between Spanish and English. With the help of a classroom paraprofessional, I was able to group my students during reading activities during the week and, one day each week, work with Jocelyn one-on-one. My first one-on-one lesson focused on teaching Jocelyn what Spanish and English are (two different languages one can speak, write and read), where those languages are used (Spanish at home and English at school), and who uses those languages (her mother, father and cousins use Spanish and her teachers and classmates use English). Two days after teaching this lesson, I sent home the weekly newsletter with my students. Jocelyn picked up her newsletter, looked at it, and told me “SPANISH MOM.” I assured her that the newsletter was in Spanish for her mother to read, and assured myself that I was on the right track in supporting Jocelyn’s understanding of languages.

My focus then turned to giving Jocelyn opportunities to have her experiences at school reinforced at home. To do so, Jocelyn had to have access to the same materials in both English and Spanish. I decided to translate our weekly leveled reading story into Spanish, copy and paste the Spanish next to the English, photocopy the book, and send it home. My other students had always had the opportunities to bring copies of our weekly story home to read during the week, and I hoped that by giving Jocelyn and her family the same opportunity, Jocelyn’s familiarity with reading and with both English and Spanish text would increase.

Language does build language

When I began these three interventions with Jocelyn and her family, Jocelyn had incomplete alphabet recognition, was not yet identifying vocabulary words in text or in isolation, and would often act out during reading activities. After four months of creating ASL/Spanish/English vocabulary DVDs, translating books into Spanish to send home, weekly vocabulary work based on the Fairview method, and once a week one-on-one reading instruction, Jocelyn read her first book and has a growing list of sight words.

I attribute Jocelyn’s success to a myriad of factors. First and foremost, I was able to establish a strong and respectful relationship with Jocelyn’s family that overcame logistical and communicative barriers. While AASD does offer satellite ASL classes in a number of counties served by the school, none are offered in Jocelyn’s county, so Jocelyn’s family has not been able to receive direct ASL instruction since her start at AASD. By devising a way to bring ASL instruction into Jocelyn’s home, her family was not only able to begin learning their daughter’s primary language, but also felt supported by the school. In addition, weekly phone calls by our school Spanish interpreter or translated written notes and weekly newsletters made Jocelyn’s family feel more included in her education while simultaneously giving them an avenue through which to express concerns, ask questions, and request more or different types of materials based on their family’s needs.

Jocelyn’s progress was also supported by the creation of accessible materials for Jocelyn and her family. These materials primarily include the ASL vocabulary DVDs that contained both an English and Spanish component created by the students and provided by AMP and weekly reading materials with clear Spanish and English text, which Jocelyn was taught to differentiate between, on each page. The vocabulary DVDs gave Jocelyn’s family access to her learning by making communication about her experiences and readings in school easier and, overall, more possible. The weekly English and Spanish reading materials did the same by allowing Jocelyn to read English print to her family while they followed in Spanish.

Finally, Jocelyn also benefitted from a short thirty minutes of one-on-one instruction once a week. This individualized time gave Jocelyn many opportunities to have positive interactions with reading and text without feeling pressured by her classmates who were further along in their reading development. It also gave her opportunities to interact with Spanish in school; Interactions that helped Jocelyn to further link language (any language) to print.

The challenge of working with a child from a Spanish-only speaking home has been one that has forced me to explore a variety of intervention strategies – including working closely with parents, using technology, creating my own materials tailored specifically to what needs to be taught, and grouping students throughout the day to allow for more specialized instruction. Attempting to improve Jocelyn’s reading and literacy skills via these interventions required a good deal of time, research, and patience, but the resulting improvement in Jocelyn’s reading performance and increased school and language involvement by her family made it all worthwhile.

References:

Day, M., & Parlakian, R. (2004). How culture shapes social–emotional development: Implications for practice in infant–family programs. Washington, DC: ZERO TO THREE Press.

Author Biography:

Jillian Minarich, M. Ed., is a Kindergarten teacher at the Atlanta Area School for the Deaf (AASD) in Atlanta, Georgia. She earned her B.A. in Deaf Education from MacMurray College in Illinois and her M.A. in Early Childhood Special Education from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

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Pictures:

This is a sample of what Jocelyn’s vocabulary cards looked like. She would create a card for each of our weekly vocabulary words by writing the word on one side and drawing a picture on the other that helped her understand the meaning of the word.

This is a sample of a Spanish translated book that would be copied and sent home with Jocelyn to read with her family.