Yesterday I was talking to our Algebra teacher. She had asked the Spanish teacher in the building to translate the problem below so that she could pose it to her students that take both Algebra and Spanish.
Our population of students that are emerging bilingual has grown significantly over the past several years. The grade 8 students are also working on systems of equations and I had the perfect teacher in mind to pose this problem (written in Spanish) to his students as well.
His last class has the greatest number of Spanish speaking students and I wanted to see the look on their faces when he posted this problem on the board…
Priceless. I watched the biggest smile appear on their faces! The look of joy of what they knew. The boy that participates the least read the problem out loud so quickly and proudly…it was AWESOME! The rest of the students were in awe. They tried to figure out pieces of the problem. But, the students that usually have to spend time using Google translate to figure out what was going on, were the first ones to get to dig in this time.
One girl then said…”wow…they have to do this all the time.”
Yep.
Best day ever.
Reflections in the Plane 
[…] Dunbar’s post, Vacos y Pollos ~ Best Day Ever, relates a powerful way to give students the experience of their emerging bilingual […]
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[…] Dunbar’s post, Vacos y Pollos ~ Best Day Ever, relates a powerful way to give students the experience of their emerging bilingual classmates, […]
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