Spanish Immersion Partnership: Baby Steps

We have added a Spanish Immersion Literature class to our course offerings this year and it has opened an opportunity for a partnership that offers some challenges. First, I do not speak Spanish. That's an obvious challenge. In addition to the language barrier, I am also working overtime to find appropriate resources that will allow the students to complete research and reading in Spanish. There are several options that will work with middle school students, but it does take some tips and tricks to make them work well.

My first option was the MEL (Michigan Electronic Library) Databases. These databases range from elementary to scholarly, so there is something for everyone. They are paid for with Michigan tax dollars, so I encourage everyone to use them--why not use what you pay for? In schools and libraries, the databases will be IP recognized. At home, there is a chance that a Michigan driver license or ID number will be needed to prove Michigan residency upon login. This number is verified and dumped--it it not kept on file for any purpose. Once logged in, I have my younger students and new researchers begin searching using Infotrac Junior (also known as "Research in Context"). When a student from the class I was working with found an acceptable article, I had them translate it into Spanish using the included menu. While this worked well for my demonstration, we did discover an issue with our technology. Google Chrome does not work on our library computers and the translate function only works in Chrome. Therefore, the students could not access that function unless they used my computer. It was cute to see them all sharing, but not very efficient.

Taking turns at the circulation station

On day two, we looked up articles using Grolier Online. Grolier has La Nueva Enciclopedia Cumbre, an online reference encyclopedia in Spanish. Students looked up articles using this resource and were able to locate information in Spanish that was useful to their research.

After searching the online sources, one student asked me, "What if I want to look up books too?" I encouraged him to do so, though the books are not in Spanish. He was able to locate a large selection of books that included most of the topics that the class needed. It was nice to see the books emerge from the shelves and I enjoyed the conversations around the illustrations and diagrams in several of the titles. We also talked about what an index is and how to use one--yet another skill that comes naturally to most adults, but must be taught to students.

Our students looking through some of the books about their research topics with their teacher

The teacher was appreciative of the variety of resources available on the topics--and the availability of articles in Spanish. I will continue to work on selecting resources that will match with the needs of this class as I know we will find additional ways to partner in teaching and learning as this class develops.