Cognates and Bilingual Students
How to Make Cross Linguistic Connections
Spanish and English share many cognates. Teachers who work as bilingual educators can use these cognates to help in a students' acquisition of both languages.
For bilingual teachers of Spanish and English explicitly teaching cognates is a great way to help our students build vocabulary in their second language and to be metacognitive about the cross linguistic connections that exist between the two languages. Teaching cognates in context helps the bilingual student transfer knowledge from one language to the other and makes building anchor charts to augment environmental print easy.
Teaching Cognates
Materials:
- Two sets of different colored index cards, one color for each language
- Pictures of vocabulary words (2 sets for each word)
- Sharpie pen
- Chart paper
- Markers, crayons, chalk
- List of cognates from content unit
Getting Ready:
To prepare make two sets of cards, Spanish on one color, English on the other. Write the words on one side and glue the pictures of the vocabulary word on the back. Make the tables on a large sheet of chart paper. Each table should have three columns with the following titles: English, Drawing, Spanish. Have the chart ready to use in order to model and have the same kind of charts pre-made for groups of three or four students to work on at a time.
Cognate Commotion
Before beginning the game, have a discussion with the students about what cognates are and write a definition on the top of the chart paper together. This lesson can be repeated throughout the year with different content units so once they have done it; they become more aware of what cognates are.
Mix the cards up into one pile and then pass them out. Depending on the number of words, students will have two to three vocabulary words. They must find their “partner” and match up the cognates. One student keeps the set of cognates. When everyone has found his partner, regroup and share out the first five or so. As the students share, the teacher writes the English cognate in its column, the Spanish in its column and does a drawing in the middle. After the teacher has filled in some of the cognate chart the students can be released to work in small groups with the pairs of cognates they have.
Once they are all done, the group can share the poster with the class. The cognate anchor chart can be displayed in the room for the children to use in their writing, when trying to decode a word in an unfamiliar text, or when trying to remember the meaning of a word.
Being able to recognize and use cognates is a valuable tool for the young bilingual children because of the power to increase their active vocabulary very quickly.
