Bilingual Books for Home and School

My 4th grade class is a two-way immersion classroom in which the students learn both English and Spanish. About 1/2 of the students are native Spanish speakers learning English and the other 1/2 of the students are native English speakers learning Spanish. In this classroom 50% of the day is taught in English and 50% is taught in Spanish. Students learn Math, Science and Language Arts in Spanish, while Social Studies and English Language Arts are taught in English. The goal of the school is to create bilingual students by the end of 8th grade.

One way for me as a teacher to reach this goal is to integrate Spanish Language Arts objectives into Science and Social Studies. Encouraging our students to make connections with real life experiences and the two languages is the goal of this project. In this project we will be able to provide student created and classroom created books.

Many of the students in my classroom do not have access to books outside of school. This project will allow students to create books that they will be able to take home and read with their families. These books will be published in the two languages that are taught at Southwest Community Campus. The books that are created using the digital cameras and photo printer will provide students with books to read and will also give them a chance to write their own text for photos that they have taken. These photos will include topics covered in Science, such as "weather", "habitats and biomes", and "food chains". The students will take real life photos of these concepts and then write text that describes the photos to create their own books. The concepts will be integrated with Language Arts objectives and also Science and Social Studies.