Teaching Students to Translate Poetry

The author describes a heritage language poetry translation project taught in a third- and fourth-grade classroom with both multilingual and monolingual students. Students interviewed family members about their heritage languages, worked with family and community members to choose and analyze a poem in their heritage language, identified essential features of the poem, and developed two interpretive translations of the poem in English. The author discusses supports provided for students with a variety of linguistic and academic profiles. Teaching literary translation centers the linguistic and cultural knowledge of multilingual students, and helps all students develop translingual competencies as close readers and nuanced writers.