You just finished a mini-lesson in your Spanish immersion classroom about writing personal narratives. After class and partner brainstorming, most students have selected a topic and are ready to write, but Jake goes to his table, looks at the blank page in his notebook, and with a crumpled brow begins to scribble frantically across the page. You know Jake struggles to see himself as a writer and does not believe he has anything to write about. You are anxious to coach him to use a new strategy you learned during training last week. You go to 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 behind her there are already three others with their own vocabulary requests. “How will I ever meet all of their needs at once?” you ask. “When might human cloning be available to the public education system?”
While cloning is an intriguing idea and could really cut down the time it takes to write sub-plans, the solution for solving this dilemma today is stamina. Writing stamina is “the product of volume and fluency,” which results in students being able to write for long periods of time, finding their own rhythm as writers (Palmer, 2020).
Writing should be a voice and not an echo (Spandel, 2005). Not only does stamina allow students to find their voices but it also opens the door for you as the teacher to confer 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 you to celebrate them as authors. For that to happen, you need margin. Your class needs to develop stamina to write independently and authentically about topics that are important to them (Spandel, 2005). In the sections that follow, I will describe how I have found success in developing writing stamina in my second-grade Spanish immersion classroom. Because 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 kindergarten, first-, and second-grade students are not yet able to efficiently look up a word in a physical or online dictionary.
And even if intermediate elementary students can look up a word, the process can be too time-consuming, disrupting their flow. So, writing without stopping is challenging—yet it is 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: Themselves
In writing and speaking, young language learners are so used to not knowing the answer that they often launch into asking how to say something that they already do know how to say.
So, I direct students to take out their metaphorical fishing poles and… go fishing! I begin the year by showing them pictures of when I went fishing with my dad and brother-in-law in Alaska. I show them a picture of me holding a large codfish and ask them how much time 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 waiting time.
Some students excitedly recount the many sonnies they caught at the lake that summer in five minutes and the one largemouth bass they waited for hours to finally hook. I then explain that the L1 words in our minds are just like the sonnies—abundant and quickly accessible. The L2 words, on the other hand, are fewer and require some wait time, just like the bass. I have a fishing rod hanging up in my classroom to illustrate this metaphor throughout the year.
So, when starting independent writing time, I first remind students to “go fishing” and ask themselves if they already know the word they are looking for. And if they do not, can they use circumlocution to use other words they do know? When students ask me how to say something in Spanish that I know is within their reach, I mime casting a fishing line to remind them to be patient and wait for the words to come. This tool not only increases students’ writing stamina but also helps them remain in the target language while speaking throughout the day.
Resource Two: Classmates
Educational theorist Lev Vygotsky maintained 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, as cited in Handsfield, 2016, p. 58). Building off his work, the sociocultural-historical theory affirms that social interaction necessarily mediates student growth in vocabulary development. Each student has a vocabulary that is unique to them. When the students sitting at one table contribute their diverse word banks to their collaborative circle, writing is greatly enriched.
So, after teaching students about using themselves as a resource, I model a think-aloud sitting with my writer’s notebook, saying in Spanish something like, “Okay, in my story about my friend Morgan and me at the beach, I would really like to add the detail about the white birds that were flying over us. I know what the word is in English, but I just do not know it in Spanish. I wonder if my classmates at my table know the word I am looking for.” And then I model whisper-asking my table, “¿Cómo se dice seagull en español?” Primary students need a lot of practice simply using a whisper voice. One way to practice is by chorally whisper-reading either all or part of the morning message or a poem.
Resource Three: The Teacher
Lastly, after asking themselves and nearby classmates, they can ask a teacher or volunteer in the room. When I realized I probably should not sit around waiting for human cloning to support my class with their vocabulary needs, I started to think of writing time as an opportunity for parent volunteers to be involved. For decades, we have known that parent involvement in students’ learning is beneficial for students, families, and teachers (Zurcher, 2016). Yet many teachers do not know where best to begin engaging parents, so they push it aside. Parent engagement within education has been proven to improve students’ writing development specifically. 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 option. Students win when they have more support for writing. Parents win when they are involved in their children’s education and writing development. Teachers win, as they are allowed the freedom to confer with students about their specific goals.
For the families of my students, I created a Google Doc calendar for the year with sign-ups to writing time Tuesday through Friday to serve as cómo-se-dice support. While volunteers should have a relative grasp of the target language, they do not need to be fluent to efficiently locate the translation a student is looking for in a physical or online dictionary. Students know that during work time they are to raise their hands and the volunteer will come to them to help.
When there is not a volunteer in the classroom, it is still important for students to develop their writing stamina and stay in one spot. So, if a student needs translation for a word and there is no volunteer, they are encouraged to underline a space in their sentence where the word will go. This way they can continue writing and find their flow. Then, when it is the final five minutes of writing time, my kidney table opens as a translation service center, and students can come with their notebooks to get their blanks filled in. While it is unfortunate to miss out on that conference time, it is far better to assign the questions to a finite window 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 includes those in language immersion programs. Teachers can foster independence by guiding students to use their vocabulary resources strategically to sustain their writing for longer periods of time. In doing so, they will come to find their voices and identities as writers.
References
Handsfield, L. J. (2016). Literacy Theory as Practice: Connecting Theory and Instruction in K–12 Classrooms. Teachers College Press.
Palmer, A. K. (2020). “Using Volume, Voice, and Stamina to Write Bravely.” English Journal, 110(2), 12–15.
Snyders, C. S. B. (2014). “‘I Wish We Could Make Books All Day!’ An observational study of kindergarten children during 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, M. A. (2016). “Partnering with Parents in the Writing Classroom.” The Reading Teacher, 69(4), 367–376. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1421
Molly Barry is a second-grade Spanish immersion teacher in Minnetonka, Minnesota, where she is passionate about fostering a buzz of engaged learning. She holds bachelor’s degrees in elementary education and Spanish education from the University of Northwestern, St. Paul, and she is currently pursuing a master’s degree in literacy education at Concordia University, St. Paul.
