Books about Bilingual Education for Teachers
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What was the title of the last book you read about bilingual education? I know I need to catch up, yes we go to a lot of summer workshops but I personally have not had a book list designated for this topic, so I started asking other bilingual/dual language educators to share what they have read. This is a list of books for teachers, administrators, parent advocates and anyone interested in learning more about bilingual education. All of the following books were recommended by other educators, some of them focus on different program models, while others on a very specific populations like identified gifted and talented bilingual students.
I was surprised by the number of books available with practical guides, case studies and strategies for bilingual/dual language educators. You will find 15 books on this list but many more are available on this list.
If you enjoy this list, check out our post about conferencesthat will be updated in July 2018.
1.Teaching for Biliteracy: Strenghtening Bridges between Languages by Karen Beeman
This is the number one recommended book from fellow bilingual educators. The concept of bridging between languages is introduced to the biliteracy filed in this practical professional development guide for teachers, administrators, and leadership teams.
You can also go to their website, where you can find useful videos, book study guides, biliteracy articles and more under the resource tab.
2¡Toma la palabra! by Monica Lara
¡Toma la palabra! is an invaluable resource for all teachers in bilingual/dual language classrooms who work with emerging bilingual students. Based on the research and experience of Dr. Mónica Lara working in countless bilingual classrooms, this book provides teachers with theory, strategies, and activities in Spanish that develop oracy and literacy. Teachers will be able to use this easy-to-follow resource to discuss and reflect on best practices, while enhancing their own Spanish language skills.
3. Dual Language Essentials for Teachers and Administrators, Second Edition by Yvonne S Freeman 
Dual Language Essentials for Teachers and Administrators has been widely used as a guide for planning and implementing dual language programs. The Second Edition provides the latest theory, research, and best practices by drawing on the experiences of administrators and teachers in successful one-way and two-way bilingual dual language programs.
Readable and practical, this edition features:
- video clips illustrating powerful and effective strategies in dual language classrooms
- an explanation of translanguaging and the changing views of bilinguals and bilingualism
- examples of teachers using translanguaging strategies
- the addition of essentials for secondary dual language programs
- an explanation of long- and short-term curriculum planning and implementation
- a discussion of academic and social equity in dual language programs
- a description of best practices in biliteracy instruction.
Dual Language Essentials for Teachers and Administrators, Second Edition will be your essential guide for planning and implementing a dual language program.
4. Struggling Learners and Language Immersion Education: Research-Based, Practitioner-Informed Responses to Educators’ Top Questions by Tara Williams Fortune
This handbook provides dual language and immersion educators with rich information and practical resources that address common concerns with children who struggle with language, literacy and learning. In response to practitioners’ most pressing questions this book offers case narratives that recount lived experiences with struggling learners from a range of educational specialists, administrators and teachers; background information and research summaries that provide important information about the existing knowledge base on this topic; discussion of issues as they relate to language minority and language majority learners; and guiding principles to inform program policies and practices. Additionally, the handbook includes reference materials and useful web resources to assist educators in meeting the needs of a wide variety of language and learning challenges.
5. Gifted Bilingual Students: A Paradox? by Esther Kogan
This book points out the myth of the gifted bilingual paradox. It is an indication that the field of education of gifted bilingual students is more a possible achievement than an impossible dream. These students are an integral part of the educational system requiring attention to be appropriately identified and nurtured so that their talent potential can be fully realized. Gifted Bilingual Students: A Paradox? includes three original case studies that complement and illustrate the theoretical discussion and gives the families’ voices a central place.
6. Educating Emergent Bilinguals: Policies, Programs, and Practices for English Learners (Language and Literacy Series) by Ofelia Garcia
Now available in a revised and expanded edition, this accessible guide introduces readers to the issues and controversies surrounding the education of language minority students in the United States. What makes this book a perennial favorite are the succinct descriptions of alternative practices for transforming our schools and students’ futures, such as building on students’ home languages and literacy practices, incorporating curricular and pedagogical innovations, using proven-effective approaches to parent engagement, and employing alternative assessment tools.
The authors have updated their bestseller to reflect recent shifts in policies, programs, and practices due to globalization and the changing economy; demographic trends; and new research on EL pedagogy. A totally new chapter highlights multimedia and multimodal instructional possibilities for engaging EL students.
This Second Edition is essential reading for all teachers of language-minority students, as well as principals, superintendents, and policymakers.
Book Features:
- Uses the most up-to-date research findings to demonstrate how ignoring children’s bilingualism perpetuates inequities in their schooling.
- Points out the problems with current policies and practices and proposes more effective alternative methods.
- Contrasts the common view of bilingualism as either subtractive or additive with more current understandings of individual bilingualism in translanguaging theories.
- Highlights how multimodalities form part of students’ communicative repertoire and shows teachers how they can leverage this to engage students.
7. Tongue-Tied: The Lives of Multilingual Children in Public Education (Spanish)
Tongue-Tied is an anthology that gives voice to millions of people who, on a daily basis, are denied the opportunity to speak in their own language. First-person accounts by Amy Tan, Sherman Alexie, bell hooks, Richard Rodriguez, Maxine Hong Kingston, and many other authors open windows into the lives of linguistic minority students and their experience in coping in school and beyond. Selections from these writers are presented along with accessible, abridged scholarly articles that assess the impact of language policies on the experiences and life opportunities of minority-language students. Vivid and unforgettable, the readings in Tongue-Tied are ideal for teaching and learning about American education and for spurring informed debate about the many factors that affect students and their lives.
8. Teaching Reading and Writing in Spanish and English in Bilingual and Dual Language Classrooms, Second Edition by Yvonne S Freeman
This second edition of the Freemans' classic text updates their ideas and strategies in response to new research and changing contexts for teaching reading and writing in both English and Spanish.
Between the growing number of Spanish-speaking students in dual language and bilingual classrooms and the increasing focus on accountability, teachers need a resource that gives them research-based instructional advice for helping all students meet standards while giving nonnative speakers access to the same high-quality education as their English-speaking peers. They must have the most effective methods for teaching reading and writing to students in two languages, and Teaching Reading and Writing in Spanish and English in Bilingual and Dual Language Classrooms provides what teachers need.
The new edition includes:
- a description of two approaches to teaching reading currently used in bilingual and dual language classes as well as the theory and research that supports each
- classroom scenarios illustrating these approaches and how they connect to state standards
- extended scenarios of effective teaching organized around themes in bilingual and dual language settings
- bibliographies of literature and content books in Spanish and English that support theme-based instruction
- an historical overview of reading instruction in Spanish and English with an analysis and evaluation of each method
- an explanation of two views of teaching writing, including how each view looks in bilingual and dual language classes as well as the theory and research that supports each approach
- a description of writing development in Spanish and English with student examples from each stage and level
- writing instructional strategies that match students' developmental levels.
With updated references and new ways for educators to connect sound instruction to state standards, the Freemans provide teachers and administrators with the theory, research, and practical information they need to meet new challenges and help every student reach high levels of reading and writing proficiency.
9. Learning in Two Worlds: An Integrated Spanish/English Biliteracy Approach (3rd Edition) by Bertha Perez
Learning in Two Worlds addresses how teachers can organize the curriculum and the learning environment to facilitate growth in literacy in both Spanish and English. The content and organization of this book reflects the authors' belief that integration of the children's language and cultural knowledge becomes the key principle for literacy instruction and for organizing literacy environments. The authors' use an integrated biliteracy approach for the development of literacy skills around children's interests, strengths, and needs. For educators in bilingual literacy studies.
10. Biliteracy from the Start: Literacy Squared in Action by Kathy Escamilla
Biliteracy from the Start: Literacy Squared in Action shows bilingual education teachers, administrators, and leadership teams how to plan, implement, monitor, and strengthen biliteracy instruction that builds on students? linguistic resources in two languages, beginning in kindergarten. Escamilla and her team present a holistic biliteracy framework that is at the heart of their action-oriented Literacy Squared school-based project. Teachers learn to develop holistic biliteracy units of instruction, lesson plans, and assessments that place Spanish and English side by side. Educators also learn to teach to students? potential within empirically based, scaffolded biliteracy zones and to support emerging bilinguals' trajectories toward biliteracy.
11. Teaching in Two Languages: A Guide for K–12 Bilingual Educators by Sharon Adelman Reyes
Grounded in the latest research, this book provides classroom-ready strategies for balancing instruction in two languages and meeting the unique challenges of educating English language learners.
12. An Educator's Guide to Dual Language Instruction: Increasing Achievement and Global Competence, K–12 By Gayle Westerberg
This user-friendly book is a key resource for teachers and administrators to ensure their school’s success in implementing and maintaining a dual language program. Authors Gayle Westerberg and Leslie Davison share their own experiences leading a dual language school, the obstacles they overcame, and the best practices they learned along the way. The book is filled with step-by-step instructions and strategies you can try immediately, as well as inspirational stories from educators in urban and rural dual language programs across the country. Topics include:
- Choosing a model for your dual language program and involving all stakeholders in the transition process;
- Marketing your program effectively to recruit students and staff, including international teachers;
- Implementing a standards-based instructional framework focused on direct vocabulary instruction, extensive reading, and using language in context;
- Setting proficiency targets and using internal and external assessments to track students’ progress;
- Incorporating technology for a more interactive and engaging language-learning experience.
You’ll also learn how to effectively transition your program through different grade levels and build a collaborative school culture for a strong, long-lasting K–12 dual language program. Additional resources are available on the authors’ website, www.duallanguageinstruction.com.
13.Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective by Ofelia García
This book examines languages and bilingualism as individual and societal phenomena, presents program types, variables, and policies in bilingual education, and concludes by looking at practices, especially pedagogies and assessments. This thought-provoking work is an ideal textbook for future teachers as well as providing a fresh view of the subject for school administrators and policy makers
14.Profiles in Emergent Biliteracy: Children Making Meaning in a Chicano Community (Educational Psychology) by Cathrene M. Connery
How do young children learn to read, write, speak, and listen in two languages? How do emergent readers and writers make meaning within multilingual communities? This book examines the emergent biliteracy development of two kindergarteners growing up in a New Mexican neighborhood. Using ethnographic accounts, the book portrays the familial, communal, and academic contexts in which the children appropriated dual proficiencies in English and Spanish, and provides a window into the homes and lives of these working-class boys and the political, philosophical, and pedagogical world of their bilingual kindergarten. The complexity of emergent biliteracy as a sociocultural-semiotic process is elaborated through Vygotskian theory, the multiple voices of these children, and the action research of their teacher.
15.Teaching in Two Languages: A Guide for K–12 Bilingual Educators by Sharon Adelman Reyes
This dual-language text provides theory and methodology for teaching reading in Spanish to Spanish/English bilingual or Spanish-dominant students. The goal is to help educators teach these students the skills necessary to become proficient readers and, thus, successful in the school system.
Never losing sight of its goal--to teach reading in Spanish to bilingual or Spanish-dominant students--the book includes a series of focusing questions and follow-up activities; these are not simply translations of existing activities, strategies, and techniques intended for monolingual English students, but specifically designed to be appropriate for Spanish-speaking students.
Juliana S.
K-5th GT Bilingual Teacher/ Content Creator Kinder Bilingüe
- Juliana Shoumbert
Comments 1
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