The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
Education:How To
Welcome to the Thursday edition of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, a podcast for English teachers in search of creative teaching strategies. Whether you’re new to the show or a long-time listener, I’m so glad you’re here for today’s edition of “Highly Recommended.” This week, I want to make sure you know just how amazing the Google Translate App really is.
Living here in Bratislava, and traveling around Europe with our family, we are constantly confronted by languages we don’t know. On Street Signs, parking signs, parking tickets, frozen pizza cooking instructions, directions for using new toys on Christmas morning, mail that lands in our box, and so much more. Which is why we really couldn’t do without our Google translate app.
At first we stared at the strange text and painstakingly tried to type it into the app. But then we discovered the camera feature. Did you know you can pick any two languages in the app, then take a picture of the first and instantly see it translated to the second?
You can also speak into the app in one language and see your words typed out in another. Or hold the camera up to someone you want to understand and get their words translated.
It’s an incredible tool, and one I use constantly in my everyday life.
For your emerging bilingual or trilingual students, Google Translate can be a huge lifeline. They can quickly hold their app camera over handout instructions, printed writing prompts, or classroom posters and see it in their own language. They can take a picture or screenshot and have the translation available for the rest of the class. And of course, beyond the app, they can plug large sections of text into Google Translate online to help them better understand a podcast transcript, close reading passage, or news article.
Google Translate can help your students keep up with your content and express the complexity of their ideas as their second or third language skills catch up with their thought processes. That’s why this week, I highly recommend you add it to your phone and get familiar with it. It doesn’t take long, and it could make all the difference to some of your students (and perhaps their parents come conference time, too).
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146: Authentic Audiences aren't Hard to Find
145: Teaching Annotation just got Fun
144: 3 Flexible ELA Units for an Omicron Winter
143: What We Can Do about Teacher Demoralization, with Doris Santoro
142: Choice Reading: Building a Reading Culture
141: Setting up your ELA Classroom Library
140: Every Student can Sketchnote, with Sylvia Duckworth
139: We Moved to Bratislava, Here's what it's Like
138: Hexagonal Thinking with Brave New Teaching (Bonus Episode)
137: Creative Activities to Pair with Any Novel
136: Creative Real-World Research Projects in ELA
135: When Students Design Escape Rooms
134: Creative Escape Rooms without the Fuss
133: Body Biographies & Digital Escape Rooms with Danielle Knight
132: A Case Study in Successful Student Podcasting
131: Help for Integrating SEL, with Dr. Lorea Martinez Perez
130: Build Connection with your Classroom Design
129: Try Hexagonal One-Pagers
128: Take your Hexagonal Thinking Activities Deeper
127: How to Create a Hexagonal Thinking Deck
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