Making Metalinguistic Connections - The Bridge


One of our goals for this year is to introduce you all to the concept of making Metalinguistic Connections (bridging between English and Spanish), as a tool for students to not just transfer academic content from one language to the other, but also engage in contrastive analysis of the two languages. In order to achieve this, there is a method called “Bridge” where at the end of a unit or specific TEK students are explicitly taught these skills, developing metalinguistic awareness at the same time.

For starters, we’d like to ask you to read this article which explains very clearly the concept of “going across the Bridge” from one language to another, as well as illustrating some teacher generated bridge anchor charts: one that focuses on academic transfer and the second one is the metalinguistic chart.

Additionally, please watch these videos that show several teachers having bridging sessions in their classes (you need to sign up to get access to these materials):


And here are some PPT presentations as well that you might find helpful:




We will start working with a few teachers first planning and modeling the bridge for their students. This will be documented so that we can develop a PD that would help other teachers get started. If you would like to volunteer to be among the first few teachers that would like to give it a try, please leave a comment below letting me know.

I hope you enjoy this material as much as I did.

Jesús López De Nava
BE/ESL Instructional Coach/Facilitator
Denton ISD



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