6 Ways to Inspire Your Dual Language Students to Learn At Home

As the summer is about to be upon us, inspiring your dual language students to continue their learning journey outside the classroom is now of immediate importance. As a dual language teacher, you need to look for ways you can inspire students to learn when at home. School holidays will allow students to relax which can make them forget some vocabularies you taught them. Learning a new language such as Spanish, Chinese or French requires practice. You need to make the students develop the interest of speaking the new words you have taught them. Start by encouraging them to speak the new language each time they meet over the holiday.

6 ways to inspire your students to learn at home

1.Have a collection of books they can borrow. There are several books which offer great bilingual learning experiences. Some students may be interested to learn during their free time but they do not have learning resources. You can have a collection of books and offer them for free to students who would like to learn. Structure the program in such a way that the students will be offered limited time to read and return so that others can borrow. Ensure you have a stock of interesting books that will encourage more students to borrow and read before they are back to school.

2.Act as a role model to the students. As a teacher you can inspire your students to learn by narrating to them the books you have read and the value you have gained from them. Let your lessons be full of examples of books that you have read, or even magazines that offer great value to readers. They will be eager to try what you have read when they are at home.

3.Encourage your students to find new books and read during holidays. You can come up with a reward program where students who find relevant books over the summer holiday can be given a prize. The students can find the new books and bring them to school when you begin classes again. They will then have to narrate to you (or their next teacher) what they read and found interesting in the books. Allowing the students freedom to research on the books on their own will motivate them to learn the target language, or help ELLs master English.

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4.Set up book clubs. To promote dual immersion education in students, you need to encourage them to read. Help organize students who come from the same neighborhood to form book clubs. They will encourage each other in their respective book clubs to read. Try to make the clubs as enjoyable as possible so that students will have the interest to read and compete among each other.

5.Suggest group work assignments to be accomplished during holidays. This will keep the students encouraged to research and practice their new language over the holiday. Giving them assignments, which they can do in a group, will allow them to socialize with their peers and work on the material to help them advance their studies. Even if they are not from the same neighborhood, you can let them interact online where they can share tasks and stay motivated to learn.

6.Organize an optional field trip during the holiday, depending on your budget, or simply do one for free and have parents supply their own transportation (when possible) or carpool. Students love learning new things and going to new places. You can organize a field trip where you can go out and name things in nature, just in your local park. You can let them name the animals you will see in the wild among other things in your field trip, this can be easily done at the Zoo or aquarium. It is a fun way to motivate students to learn.

The above are simple tips to employ to make your students interested to learn more during holidays. You can apply them to improve your class performance. That being said, teachers work HARD! You must allow yourself to take a break over the summer and rest- you deserve it! These tips can be applied and organized by parents, so simply suggest them to them, but do not feel obligated to do these yourself, as you must allow yourself to rejuvenate for the next school year!

Author: Patricia Griselda Pérez

Dr. Patricia Pérez holds an A.A. from Ohlone College: B.A. and M.S. degree from California State University, East Bay and an Ed.D. from the University of San Francisco. She serves as an educator, consultant and teacher coach, which provides professional development, curriculum development and multicultural awareness services to local and international educational institutions and corporations. Dr. Pérez is fluent in Spanish and began her career as an elementary school teacher in a bilingual classroom. In the past two decades, she has developed a wide range of experience working at every level of public education, providing support to educators and directly to students. Her interest focus on promoting educational excellence through equity in order to overcome institutional barriers that confront underserved students of diverse backgrounds. Dr. Pérez is also an accomplished writer and has published in the areas of multicultural education and organizational management and leadership. She is a contributing author to Multicultural Education in Practice: Transforming One Community at a Time and Collaboration and Peak Performance: A Multidisciplinary Perspective for Emerging Leaders.