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Creative Play Bilingual Homeschool
Feb. 14, 2007
A simple how-to-- Teaching reading in Spanish
The question I often get is how did I teach Spanish reading to our daughter. Another variation of that question is: "How do I integrate more Spanish into our home?" The second question is more of a general how-to and will be dealt with later.
I began teaching dd reading in Spanish first when she was 4.5. I was working in two bilingual first-grade classrooms as an aide at that time, and in charge of a couple of 'low-scoring' reading groups. Why I was put in charge of teaching Spanish to native speakers, when I didn't have a first clue of how to going about it is still a question I ask myself. Fortunately, I latched myself onto native speakers who were teachers and learned a lot that semester (the teacher I worked under was... less than useful). I must say, I learned a lot of Spanish in the 1st grade, and realized how, although fluent, a lot of vocabulary comes from growing up with it. Simple phonics assumes a lot (the same goes for trying to teach non-English students to read in English without vocabulary development first; short-term results, long-term failures for English immersion students who usually grow illiterate in both languages - but that's a whole other post).
Dd was/is completely bilingual, so I could have gone either way in reading. As it were, by the end of the school year, I knew a lot more about teaching Spanish than English, and had been practicing on her ideas I wanted to introduce to my groups, so Spanish is the direction we went.
Our curriculum consisted of a photocopied Spanish reader and index cards. Another teacher had also given me a paper easel onto which I wrote a vowel poem (A, a, a, El burro se va....etc.). The index cards I wrote the different syllables (one week was ma/me/mi/mo/mu) and we would practice the syllables one at a time. As we added more letters, a favorite game was the Silly Word game. We turned the cards over two at a time, and read the "word" that was created. In the Spanish reader, after introducing the vowels began the letter /m/ and short phrases (Mi mama. Mi mama me ama. etc.), with each lesson introducing a new letter/syllable. I didn't use the reader extensively until her unofficial (because of age) K year though (it's a 1st grade text, so we stretched it out a little).
Really, that's all we did. I finally was able to find an online store that sold the readers with workbooks and teacher's guides, and passed the info on to my teacher mentors the next year so they could use it in their classrooms. We are currently using the second reader in the series, and then I'll have to find something else. It's only a 1st and 2nd grade series. Dd really enjoys it though (surprisingly) and often asks to read it.
Finding native Spanish materials in the US can sometimes be difficult. Our yahoo group has found a potential supplier, but they supposedly do not sell to individuals and workbooks must be sold in initial sets of 10. However, I put in a test order in December, and they were ready to sell. Also, I've met the rep for this area, and he's told me to just call him. We'll see. Next year, I will try to order the math, and see what's available for reading and I'll see how easy it is.
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