You’ve just finished a mini-lesson in your Spanish classroom on writing personal narratives. After class and brainstorming with partners, most of the students have chosen a topic and are ready to write, but Jake walks over to his desk, looks at the blank page in his notebook, and, frowning, begins to scribble frantically on it. You know Jake has a hard time seeing himself as a writer and believes he has nothing to write about. You’re eager to teach him a new strategy you learned in training last week. You sit down next to him, but before you can say a word, Amy comes up to you and asks, “¿Cómo se dice climbed en español?” You look up and notice that three others are already standing behind her with their own vocabulary requests. “How am I ever going to meet all of their needs at once?” you ask. “When will human cloning be available in the public education system?”
While cloning is an intriguing idea and could really reduce the time it takes to write partial plans, the solution to this dilemma today is perseverance. Perseverance in writing is “the product of volume and fluidity,” which results in students being able to write for longer periods of time and find their own rhythm as writers (Palmer, 2020).
Writing should be a voice, not an echo (Spandel, 2005). Not only does persistence allow students to find their voice, but it also opens up opportunities for you as a teacher to consult with students individually and in small groups. Young writers benefit greatly from regular differentiated instruction, feedback, and encouragement from the teacher (Snyder and Bahnson, 2014). They need your recognition as writers. For that to happen, you need latitude. Your class needs to develop persistence to write independently and authentically about topics that matter to them (Spandel, 2005). In the following sections, I will describe how I successfully developed persistence in writing in my second-grade Spanish immersion class. Since most of my students are only in their third year of learning the target language, they are still very much developing their vocabulary. In addition, most students in kindergarten, first, and second grade are not yet able to efficiently look up a word in a physical or online dictionary.
And even if middle school students can look up a word, the process can be too time-consuming and disrupt their reading flow. So writing without pausing is challenging—but not impossible.
To help my students find the right words, I teach them to use their resources in this order: 1. themselves; 2. classmates; 3. the teacher.
Resource One: Yourself
When writing and speaking, young language learners are so used to not knowing the answer that they often begin to ask how to say something they already know how to say.
So I tell students to get out their metaphorical fishing rods and go…fishing! I start the year by showing them pictures from my fishing trip with my dad and brother-in-law in Alaska. I show them a picture of me holding a large cod and ask them how long they think it took me to catch that particular fish. This catapults the class into a conversation about how the biggest catches are usually preceded by a long wait.
Some students excitedly talk about the many “songs” they caught in five minutes at the lake that summer, and the one largemouth bass they waited hours to catch. I then explain that the L1 words in our heads are just like the “songs” – numerous and quickly accessible. The L2 words, on the other hand, are fewer and require some waiting time, just like the bass. I have a fishing rod hanging in my classroom to illustrate this metaphor year-round.
So when I start independent writing time, I first remind students to “go fishing” and ask themselves if they already know the word they’re looking for. And if not, can they use circumlocutions to use other words they know? When students ask me how to say something in Spanish that I know they’ll understand, I play the role of casting a fishing line to remind them to be patient and wait for the words. This tool not only increases students’ stamina while writing, but also helps them stay in the target language as they speak throughout the day.
Resource Two: Classmates
Educational theorist Lev Vygotsky argued that social interaction is essential to the zone of proximal development. He stated that “children grow into the intellectual life of those around them” (Vygotsky, 1978, cited in Handsfield, 2016, p. 58). Building on his work, sociocultural and historical theory confirms that social interaction inevitably mediates growth in students’ vocabulary development. Each student has a vocabulary that is unique to them. When students seated around a table contribute their diverse word stocks to their shared circle, writing is greatly enriched.
So after I teach students to use themselves as a resource, I demonstrate think aloud by sitting with my notebook and saying in Spanish something like, “Okay, in my story about my friend Morgan and I at the beach, I’d really like to add the detail about the white birds that flew overhead. I know the English word, but I just don’t know it in Spanish. I’m wondering if my classmates at my table know the word I’m looking for.” And then I demonstrate a whisper question at my table: “¿Cómo se dice seagull en español?” Elementary school students need a lot of practice just speaking in a whisper voice. One way to practice is to whisper all or part of the morning message or a poem in chorus.
Resource Three: The Teacher
Eventually, after asking themselves and nearby classmates, they can ask a teacher or volunteer in the room. When I realized I probably shouldn’t sit around waiting for human cloning to assist my class with their vocabulary, I began to think of writing time as an opportunity for volunteer parent involvement. For decades, we’ve known that parent involvement in student learning is beneficial to students, families, and teachers (Zurcher, 2016). Yet many teachers don’t know where best to start with parent involvement, so they push it aside. Involving parents in the classroom has been shown to improve students’ writing development in particular. There are many ways teachers can begin to involve parents in their students’ writing. Inviting them to volunteer during class writing time is a win-win-win. Students win when they have more writing support. Parents win when they are involved in their children’s education and writing development. Teachers win because they have the freedom to consult with students about their specific goals.
For my students’ families, I created a Google Doc calendar for the year where students can sign up for Tuesday-Friday writing time to serve as hands-on support. While volunteers should have some knowledge of the target language, they do not need to be fluent in it to efficiently find the translation a student is looking for in a print or online dictionary. Students know to raise their hand during work time and the volunteer will come to them to help.
Even when there is no volunteer in the classroom, it is important for students to develop their writing stamina and stay in one place. So, if a student needs a translation for a word and there is no volunteer, they are encouraged to underline a place in their sentence where the word belongs. This way they can keep writing and find their writing flow. Then, when the last five minutes of writing time come around, my kidney table is opened as a translation service center and students can come with their notebooks to have their blanks filled in. While it is unfortunate to miss this conference time, it is far better to assign the questions to a limited time slot than to have sporadic interruptions during writing conferences.
For teachers to truly differentiate their writing instruction, students in the class must be able to write independently for the duration of the writing workshop. This is true even for those participating in language immersion programs. Teachers can encourage independence by guiding students to strategically use their vocabulary resources to sustain their writing over longer periods of time. In doing so, they will find their voice and identity as writers.
References
Handsfield, LJ (2016). Literacy Theory as Practice: Connecting Theory and Instruction in K–12 Classrooms. Teachers College Press.
Palmer, AK (2020). “Writing courageously with volume, voice, and stamina.” English Journal, 110(2), 12–15.
Snyders, C.S.B. (2014). “’I wish we could make books all day!’ An observational study with kindergarten children during a writing workshop.” Early Childhood Education Journal, 42(6), 405–414.
Spandel, V. (2005). The 9 Rights of Every Writer: A Guide for Teachers. Heinemann.
Zurcher, MA (2016). “Partnering with parents in writing instruction.” The Reading Teacher, 69(4), 367–376. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1421
Molly Barry is a second grade Spanish teacher in Minnetonka, Minnesota, where she is passionate about fostering a vibrant atmosphere and engaged learning. She holds a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and Spanish education from the University of Northwestern, St. Paul, and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in literacy education at Concordia University, St. Paul.
