Libros for Language

Experience the site live on librosforlanguage.org!

Educators are missing tools and criteria for teaching and measuring literacy effectively with multilingual students.

• Literacy is being measured for each language a student speaks, not as a blend of their understandings in-between languages.
• Educators who are in multi-lingual environments are priotizing reading/writing for academic purposes over the other pillars of language like listening/speaking.

Libros for Language is a digital bibliography of children’s literature that celebrates multilingualism and facilitates translanguaging pedagogies.

• Meg and Grace were were awarded a Carnegie-Whitney grant from The American Library Association to create the website.

Translanguaging is a natural phenomenon in which multilingual people mix and integrate their languages to make meaning depending on context and purpose.¹

• For example Spanglish is commonly used by bilingual hispanic or latino americans through mixing Spanish with English
• The title of the project itself uses translanguaging by placing the Spanish word “Libros” into the english sentence Books for Language.

I designed and coded a website that enables teachers to find the right translanguging book and resources for them and their students.

• Apply a translanguaging typology developed by Meg and Grace to the site’s information architecture and UI that features faceted search.
• Select a typeface that supported multiple languages, non-latin characters, diacritical marks, and low/no cost for a non-profit project.
• Work closely with our graphic designer Jadzia to develop a logotype and customized icons that represent their translanguaging typology (inspired by Material Design).

The Impact

Libros for language was featured in The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) blog.

“As a visitor to the site, I was impressed at how your web designer anticipated my needs and queries. Whenever I thought, “I wonder if…” my eye would travel to a clearly visible and logically organized answer to my wondering. Kudos to them and to you for envisioning and realizing this resource!” — Associate Professor of Language and Literacy Education at Penn State University

What I Learned

• The 4 pillars of language are reading, writing, speaking, and listening
• Webflow is a great tool for rapidly building and testing websites but isn’t as suitable for sites requiring powerful search/filter features.
• Planning a website launch into roadmap phases starting with an minimum viable product (MVP) is a great way to get feedback early and pivot when necessary.