It Sounds More Like a Gangbanger: Using Collaborative Translation to Understand Literary Concepts

The authors present and discuss an instructional strategy—collaborative translation—that builds upon the cultural and linguistic strengths that many bilingual and emerging bilingual students bring to school. Collaborative translation involves six steps: choosing appropriate texts, connecting students to texts, independent reading, sharing the main idea, requesting a translation, and sharing/critiquing those translations. We discuss and explore aspects of collaborative translation to help language arts teachers enact this instructional strategy in the classroom. We view collaborative translation as an important way for teachers to simultaneously teach literacy concepts and support the development of bilingual students.—