Bilingual Blogging 2

A great wake up call to all non-English-born-speakers. To make a blog in two languages (or more) is a fantastic tool for teachers from countries with another primary languange than English. On one hand to target the young pupils and their parents, on the other hand to target teachers and schools around the world for collaborative matters.

Two new blogs have been born in Denmark and Greece:

Science teacher Michael Ljunggreen from Vonsild School in Denmark has started a new blog with students´ science experiments written in both Danish and English. SCIENCE PLAYGROUND http://sciencepg.blogspot.com/

 

German and English teacher Effie Kyrikakis from Winners Education in Athens, Greece has made both a blog: http://winnerseducation.blogspot.com/ and a wiki: http://winnerseducation.blogspot.com/ in both Greek end English.

It could be great to hear comments on the pedagogical thoughts about this from both bilingual teachers and English speaking teachers. It could also be great to hear if anyone know other bilingual blogs, wikis etc. as examples.

Bilingual Blogging

Teaching 1st graders in the Danish Public School means focusing on basic areas of Danish language. In Denmark, English is introduced in 3rd grade.

Nevertheless I found it important going global to enlarge the global awareness of my pupils and open the door to other cultures and nations. Awareness of differences gives greater socialisation in class as well.

Our class blog is written in both Danish and English. Danish so the pupils and their parents can follow our daily work (portfolio like) and in English to begin cultural collaboration as for relatives in other countries. In that way we gain several learning goals.

Our first big collaborative project is about “The Global Lunch Table”. What we eat and how we get our food for lunch in different parts of the world. It was an initiative from our friends in Room 14, Hamilton East School, New Zealand

Our next task is to filming what we have written about our lunch in Danish and then have our ´Better Buddies` from 6th grade to read it in English. It will be published on the blog. In that way we also get an athentic collaboration in school between 1st and 6th graders.

Doing bilingual blogging easily helps pupils who do not speak English to start being 2nd language learners.

You can visit our class blog here: http://vonsildskole11.blogspot.com/ and you are welcome to contact me for further information.

Stefan Åge Nielsen - Vonsild School, Denmark

snskole@gmail.com

@snskole (Twitter)

stefan.aage.nielsen (Skype)