WB French and Spanish Editions

Ways to use the visual dictionary feature of the French and Spanish WB editions might include meeting the Language Arts multicultural standard by comparing words. This feature could also be useful in the word study section of daily literacy. For example, the names of dog breeds in French and English are cognates with the exception of -- surprisingly -- the poodle. To have students sound out "bouledogue" would bring great delight to them. My students hunger for languages, but classroom instruction is not offered until ninth grade in our district. This would be a very fun way to give them a taste of world languages while emphasizing comparisons with English.

I do not see a visual dictionary feaure in the English version of WB Kids. I love the diagrams and the clarity of pictures in the French and Spanish visual dictionary features. Learning to decipher nonficiton text features (such as diagrams) and taxonomy are K-5 standards. I will be trying to introduce my teachers to the possibility of opening up the French WB's visual dictionary feature, going to alimentation, then fruits, then baies, then coupe d'un raisin (cutaway view of a grape), then letting the students roll their tongues around the labels for a moment, then switching the diagram to English. This can be projected on their Promethean Boards, then a clear layer screen can be opened over the WB projection so the teacher and students can write and draw on top of the WB diagram.

I think that in flipping quickly back and forth between languages; in using non-English languages in a casual and lighthearted manner, we can give our very landlocked students in western South Dakota a sense of how interconnected the world is. Students in cities -- even cities as small as Sioux Falls -- come into contact with other cultures and languages far more frequently than do our students here.

In the WB Spanish version I listened to an article on photography. Certainly this would be helpful to the rare Spanish speaking student, and for Spanish Club. I liked the fact that the section of words being read was highlighted so one could try to follow along. As an aside, I found it a little confusing that the example of an antique photograph was of American Civil War soldiers. I had expected it to be of Spanish or Mexican soldiers since they speak Spanish. It brought home to me that I am not reading a Spanish encyclopedia, but rather a Spanish language version of an American encyclopedia. I'm still getting my head around that.

Lastly, I wanted to see if there were Spanish songs with an audio component, which would be an interesting way to address the multicultural standard, and also help our students actually learn some Spanish. I found a terrific diagram of the layout of a symphony orchestra that would be lots of fun for our orchestra teacher, but if there were songs anywhere, I couldn't find them.

In sum, the French and Spanish language editions were a complete surprise to me: they are full of fun things for us to do, even in our all-English school.