From colorin colorado - https://www.colorincolorado.org/article/connect-students-background-knowledge-content-ell-classroom

Classroom activities should support students’ use of two-way translation as a strategy for making meaning. Students should be encouraged to use their translation skills as a resource as they read and discuss challenging texts.

In the United States, many emergent bilinguals have experiences of translating for family or community members outside of school (Orellana, 2001). Although translation and translanguaging are not the same thing, translation creates a space in which students can use their translanguaging skills as they move between languages.

By inviting students to translate, teachers can create authentic activities where translanguaging is not only encouraged but also socially visible and useful within a classroom space.

Rowe, 2018: "Although the school had a welcoming atmosphere and provided translators for parents, instruction was in English and, by second grade, many students had begun to view English as the appropriate language for classroom activities. Therefore, in order for the multilingual composing activity to be successful, I had to work to create a classroom culture and community in which students felt their languages were valued.

This was an ongoing process throughout the year, and I began on the first day of class by making sure that students knew they were invited and encouraged to speak in whatever language they desired. With this context in mind, the multilingual composing activity was launched through whole-group read-alouds and discussions of multilingual children’s trade books such as Dear Primo: A Letter to My Cousin by Duncan Tonatiuh, Family Pictures/ Cuadros de Familia by Carmen Lomas Garza, and Elephant Huggy by Win World.

In these class discussions, students noted how authors used more than one language and sometimes switched between the two languages. We also considered the reasons why an author might write in more than one language and who would be able to read such a text.

Following the first design principle of valuing students’ languages and cultures, these conversations helped build a classroom culture that encouraged the use of heritage languages and valued those languages as resources" (Rowe, 2018. p. 33)

Rowe, 2018: "Next, students were invited to write their own stories or informational texts in English and/or their heritage language during writers’ workshop. This enacted the fifth design principle of inviting students to create dual-language or multilanguage texts.

These texts could be stories of their choosing or on topics relevant to their experiences in school or at home (e.g., superhero adventures, interactions with brothers and sisters). This helped keep the activity authentic and engaging, following the third design principle of authentic activities.

Students wrote these texts on paper and edited them with my support during one on-one conferences. I had students write their texts on paper, rather than composing entirely on the tablet, not only because of a limited number of tablets but also because I was able to work with students to plan, draft, edit, and illustrate their work more easily" (Rowe, 2018. p. 34).

Rowe, 2018: "After completing and editing their written stories, students were invited to use touchscreen tablets (e.g., iPads) to take pictures of their pages. Using the app Book Creator, they then accessed the photos from the tablet’s photo library and inserted them into a multipage e-book" (Rowe, 2018. p 34).

Rowe, 2018: "During author sharing time, students connected the tablet to the digital projector and speakers to share their completed e-books with the class. Because most students had peers who shared their heritage language, the class served as a multilingual audience with whom authors could share their multilingual texts. This fulfilled the sixth design principle of ensuring that students have a bilingual or multilingual audience with whom they can share their work" ( Rowe, 2018. p. 35).

Rowe, 2018: "The goal of this activity was to support students’ translanguaging as they created multilingual texts. Prior to beginning, many students were hesitant to write in a language other than English. However, as students became more comfortable creating texts with bilingual audio, some students also began to create bilingual written texts. Of the 84 written books that students published during the year, 19 (23%) included some text written in a language other than English (four of these were written entirely in Spanish). The first book that a student wrote using a language other than English was created in mid-November, after more than a month of students engaging in the multilingual e-book process.

Figure 4 shows an example of a Spanish–English bilingual text created by Gloria (all student names are pseudonyms). Students who spoke heritage languages other than Spanish were more hesitant to write in their heritage language. I suspect this is because they were the only speaker of their language in the classroom and therefore had fewer heritage language supports. Students only created two texts in a written language other than English or Spanish. One of these was a Farsi translation that a student asked his father to create, which suggests one possibility for increasing family involvement in similar activities and highlights the importance of home-to-school connections.

To connect with families about students’ e-books, I emailed completed books to parents when possible. In addition, some students took in-progress books home and worked on them with family members. Future projects could extend home-to-school connections by inviting family members to the classroom to compose with students and to hear students share their texts. This could be especially valuable for students who are the only speakers of their heritage language in the class" (Rowe, 2018. p. 35).

Rowe, 2018: "Students were able to use their full linguistic repertoires freely when writing and recording their stories. Rather than being forced to communicate only in English, as sometimes happens in English dominant school settings, students were encouraged to tap into the linguistic resources they already possessed. I believe students were prolific, enthusiastic writers in part because they were given a space that did not restrict their language use; rather, it allowed them to explore their ideas in a way that naturally reflected how these ideas are formed.

Translanguaging was evident as students moved across languages in both their written texts and audio recordings. In writing, Valeria used the Spanish word cabañas (cabins) in a text that was otherwise composed in English: “One day I wus goinag to The cavañas and I went ice ekaden and I kudindt skat so mi dad help me and i Fild hape.” She read this text as, “One day I was going to the cabañas and I went ice skating and I couldn’t skate so my dad help me and I feeled happy.” Instead of substituting a familiar but less specific English word, such as house, Valeria drew on her Spanish vocabulary to create a more nuanced meaning in her text.

Translanguaging also occurred naturally in students’ audio recordings. For example, Javier recorded audio for his text in English and Spanish. He wrote in English: “The to pope ran owy.” He read this in English as, “The two puppy run away.” For his Spanish audio recording, he said, “el [the] puppy run lejos [far].” In both of these examples, students were able to efficiently get their meaning across, rather than being forced to stop or say something else, as might have happened if the activity had restricted the use of their languages. These instances reflect how many emergent bilinguals, such as Valeria and Javier, use language in their everyday lives" ( Rowe, 2018. p. 35).

Rowe: 2018: "Students were encouraged to add heritage language audio recordings not only to their own books but also to their peers’ books. Although students likely had experience translating outside of school (Orellana, 2001), this was an ability not commonly drawn upon in their school instructional activities. This practice quickly took off in the classroom, and it soon became desirable to create a text and then have it translated by peers into as many languages as possible (see Figure 5).

The average number of audio languages in books was 2.9 languages per text. This was especially important for students who were the only speaker of their heritage language in the classroom. Rather than feeling marginalized, these students became highly desired translators as they could add a new language that no one else in the class was able to speak.

Students began to value not only their own languages but also those of their peers. This reflects the first design principle: that diverse languages were valued in the classroom and used as resources. Students became proficient translators for each other and developed systems for asking for translation from others. A request often heard was, “Can you put it in your language?” The following is an exchange that took place between Valeria, who spoke Spanish and English, and Fynn, who spoke Kinyarwanda and English:

This interaction shows a sophisticated use of translation by both Valeria, as the translator, and Fynn, as the author who wished to have his text translated. Fynn began by reading his text too fast for Valeria to follow. This caused her to stop him and ask him to go “slower,” by which she meant presenting smaller chunks of text at a time. Fynn acknowledged this and then began to provide smaller bits of text to translate. He started with words, then moved to presenting her with phrases. As with adult translators, a word-by-word translation does not always reflect the speaker’s meaning (Nida, 2012).

As they worked together across the year, students learned that they needed to provide each other with meaningful phrases to create a comprehensible translation. In addition, students who were emergent writers had to be able to clearly read their texts for the translator, which encouraged them to practice reading their texts and check that they made sense. The translators had to understand the author’s text to create a meaningful translation in the new language" (Rowe, 2018. p. 36).