Even though my goal is to use Spanish almost all of the time in class, when
an excited child brings a bilingual book in for me to read in Spanish class,
I find it very hard to refuse the request.
I gather the children around me on the carpeted classroom area. I place two
equal-sized chairs at the head of the circle. One is for me and the other
is for the child. We take turns; I read the Spanish and s/he reads the English on each page. The child is thrilled to participate fully in the reading, and the children hear my Spanish. Sometimes I let the "bringer" read the first and last page in English and let other volunteers take turns reading English on the other pages. The important choral repetition of rhyming/repetitive sections is something I focus on.
By the way, I usually try to see if I can borrow the bilingual book overnight first so as to plan how the children will participate in the Spanish part of the reading session. I intend the focus of the lesson to be on the Spanish part and not so much the English reading. I only have fifteen minutes with each class!
And -- it's always a good idea to pre-read any book. Having had a bad
experience reading something cold is something I'd like to forget -- I just
couldn't get my tongue around a particularly challenging Spanish word and
embarrassed myself in front of the children and their regular classroom teacher! Ouch!
