Did you know that initial literacy instruction in Spanish differs from English? Many districts offer many professional development opportunities in English Literacy to teachers in a Bilingual Education program. Teachers have been trained to teach students to read in English. Unfortunately, many teachers are told “Whatever works in English, works in Spanish. Just translate it”. The truth is that although there are commonalities between both languages, the initial process is different.
I created a graphic (see below) that demonstrated the initial process in Spanish. I will scratch the surface of initial Spanish literacy instruction below.
The first thing you should know is that Spanish is a syllabic language. Syllable awareness emerges before phoneme awareness and its a stronger predictor of reading success (Freeman and Freeman, 2006). There are many multisyllabic words in Spanish compared to English so having syllable awareness and being able to break words into syllables is crucial for our kiddos.
Once students have syllable awareness you can begin to introduce the vowels. Students must know that there are strong (a-e-o) and weak (i-u) vowels to appropriately segment words into syllables. Vowels are known as the building blocks of Spanish Literacy. They are taught first and then the consonants are introduced.
Letter names in Spanish are not as important as letter sounds. If letter names are introduced first, students become easily confused i.e.: if the letter hache “h” is introduced, students may confuse it for a or ch. Therefore, introducing letter sounds first is essential.
After students have mastered letter sounds and can form syllables, letter names can be introduced.
I hope this short post can bring to light that the process in teaching students how to read in Spanish does not follow the same path as English. Let’s give our bilingual students the authentic instruction they deserve.
xo,
CG
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