Matemáticas en español

This week for class we were asked to play an educational game. I choose SuperSaber, a learning game in Spanish. For whatever reason, probably because I am a prospective teacher of Spanish, I assumed this game was going to be a game where one would be playing to practice and learn Spanish. That is not really how I found it to be though. The game is more set up to be a learning game for those who already know Spanish, or possibly those that are learning in bilingual classrooms. But when I think of teaching in a Spanish 6-12 classroom, these skills needed to complete the tasks are very basic (way lower than the level of these students, especially high schoolers) level. Although the beginning of each game would serve a great purpose in practicing reading Spanish and following directions in the language, because of this basic level students would easily be able to figure out many of the games without even reading the directions. They would take advantage of their "digital nativeness" that would allow them just to play with the program to figure it out, without even using the Spanish. I can attest to this because that is exactly what I did for a few of the activities. For example the first activity that comes into my head in the one for math practice called: Carreras de sumas y restas. I caught myself and realized I wasn't even paying attention to the Spanish on the screen. Instead, I was just trying to get my guy to move down the track by focusing all my attention on the math problem. 

Like I said before, if you are teaching elementary school in a bilingual classroom, this seems like it may be something that could be useful for you. Students would be learning and practicing their math skills in Spanish. But this still makes me wonder about the fact that they are "digital natives." Like me, would they even pay attention to the Spanish? or Even if they only pay attention to a few Spanish words, would the fact that the game is in Spanish be enough to make it an adequate learning game for learning math in Spanish?

I can see potential for some of the games related to spelling words, for example the one distinguishing between whether words are spelled with a 'b'or a 'v' called: Carrera de la 'b'y la 'v,' being used in a typical Spanish classroom though. The 'b' and the 'v' sound very similar in Spanish and so therefore the spelling of words with these letters could be common mistakes. But then again, we would have to have knowledge of whether this is a common problem among students learning Spanish as a second language or mostly just among students who speak Spanish as their first language. 

Overall I think this program was really neat in that it touched upon many different school subjects. I can mostly see it being a tool in bilingual classrooms or classrooms for students who are native Spanish speakers, however, I think a lot of this is due to the structure of how world languages are taught in the U.S. In many places, they are not available until middle or high school. At this point students have more trouble learning a language because they are nearing the end of the critical learning period in which learning a second language is more easily done. If languages were taught at a younger level, then yes, having an immersion game like this where students can learn about other subjects in their second language would be beneficial. But since this isn't typical, and a lot of the games in this program require a decent amount of background knowledge of the students' Spanish abilities and academic level, like any educational game that might be implemented, there should be some discretion or skepticism taken into consideration.