"Reading is the same in English and in Spanish."
"This is how they told us to do it."
"They're low in both languages."
"They just can't read in either language."
Sound familiar?
My passion for equity in Bilingual Education has taken me on a journey of curiosity and research. Specifically as it relates to biliteracy. My big umbrella questions connected to teaching Latinx students phonics and taking a deep dive into the research focusing on introducing vowels and consonants in Spanish.
To be clear, there are significant differences in teaching students to read in English and Spanish. (Check out my previous post for a "scratch of the surface" version of teaching literacy in Spanish.) Pero, are there things that teachers should consider when introducing phonics to Spanish speakers? Absolutely!
In "Spanish Language Pedagogy for Biliteracy Programs", Dr. Mora beautifully outlines a phonics sequence with non-transferable points based on Rosenthal,1987. This is a game changer for educators (specifically those working in dual language programs) because it highlights sounds that do not exist in Spanish and therefore, might present difficulty to our Spanish speaking students. You can find the phonics sequence on the first two pages of the PDF file. NOTE: The blends highlighted in red are the same in English and Spanish.
Source: Jill Kerper Mora. Spanish Language Pedagogy for Biliteracy Programs. San Diego, California,Montezuma Publishing, 2016.
Did you know that the concepts of long, short, r-controlled and schwa vowels don’t have a Spanish equivalent? However, transfer does exist with some letters/sounds. Below is a sketchnote that I created that shows the Graphophonemic transfer from Spanish to English.
Escamilla, Kathy. Biliteracy from the Start : Literacy Squared in Action. Philadelphia, Caslon Publishing, 2014.
One of my favorite articles by Dr. Kathy Escamilla is" Teaching Literacy in Spanish". In Spanish, the vowels are introduced before the consonants. But did you know their order of frequency? You can see this on the 3 and 4th page of the PDF.
Think: What are the instructional implications of this?
Phonics sequences are an integral part of reading programs purchased by many districts. The truth is that many translate the English programs into Spanish without taking into account the authenticity of Spanish literacy. I analyzed a few sequences proposed by researchers on the Spanish spelling and sound sequence. They can be found on pgs. 6-9. What do these sequences have in common? How do they differ? Do they resemble the ones that you are currently using?
I hope you find these documents useful and they help you create lessons that center the authenticity of the Spanish language.
xo,
Claribel
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