It might be tempting to teach Spanish reading the way we teach English reading. But, that would be a mistake. A mistake I made… for 4 years.

Different languages have different strategies for teaching reading.

As diligent Spanish immersion school parents, we practiced the Spanish letter sounds and reading with my kids at home, but their progress was always slower than I’d like. Now, with my 3rd kid in dual language kindergarten I’ve found out why! I was using English reading strategies to support their Spanish reading skills! The concept is so obvious, and yet I failed to see it. Different languages are… different. And, therefore, different languages have different strategies for teaching reading!

Alright, let’s discuss how to teach reading the Spanish way! As most of us probably remember, English reading (or more technically, decoding) is taught by saying each letter sound separately. For example: d-o-g makes “dog.” Spanish reading, however, is taught by breaking down the word into syllables and then combining the syllables together. For example: ma-pa makes mapa and ca-si-ta makes casita.

Pre-reading practice: How you can help at home.

Before students learn to spell or even read words, they will practice clapping out syllables. Believe it or not, kids do this mostly accurately without training. You can start this with your children when they come across a new Spanish word. Simply say the new word and have them clap it out. “mano…. ma-no” “lapiz… la-piz”

If you are wondering what words to use, here are some ideas:

• vocab lists from their teacher
• words for common classroom items (because they hear them all day)
• “palabras de uso frecuente de kinder”(commonly used Spanish words)
• common classroom directives (escribe, repite, escucha, habla…)
• classroom academic vocabulary (in Spanish)

You can find most of the word categories with a simple google search. For classroom academic vocabulary you might check this out. If you want an activity to expose your children to more vocab check out my kindergarten sentence stems activity. The vocab in this activity is based on the types of things your child will be seeing in their first few months in Spanish Immersion.

Before we begin: Kindergarten language standards and Spanish letter sounds

There are three main skills kids need to be able perform with letters. Although related, these are three separate skills. Just because they can do one skill, doesn’t mean they can do the others!

They need to be able to:

1. Identify and name a letter they see. “What letter is this (point to a B)?”

2. Say the sound each letter makes. “What sound does B make?“

3. Recognize a sound in a word and associate it with the correct letter. “What letter makes the ‘buh’ sound?” One easy way for them to practice this skill is by recognizing the beginning sound in a word. “Point to the letter that you hear at the beginning of the word “beso.”

**If you are curious to know ALL the language standards (the English ones and the Spanish ones) your child will be learning in Dual language kindergarten, check this out.

6 STEPS TO TEACH READING FLUENCY IN SPANISH

Alright, so now that you have the background, let’s talk about how to work with your child on Spanish letter sounds.

Step 1: Get a pack of lower-case letter flashcards – in Spanish.
You can use upper-case or lower-case, but since most of the letters they read will be in lower-case, I prefer to work with those. You can download these Spanish lowercase letter flashcards, or simply make your own. Often, the teachers will ask that the vowels be a different color, but not always.

Step 2: Work on the vowel sounds first.
In the Spanish language, vowels appear more than consonants – the opposite is true for English. So, it’s helpful to make sure children have a good grasp of the vowel sounds. Luckily, in Spanish, the vowels only make one sound! To remind your child of what they have learned in class you might want to watch a Spanish vowel sound video like this one before working with your kiddo.

Spice it up: Flashcards can be boring for kids, so you might want to make it feel more like a game. One options is to play “letter slap.”. This can be done for letter names as well as sounds. Put a few letter options out and then tell them to slap the letter you say, or the letter that makes the sound they hear. You can play this same game on the floor and have them stomp on the letter.

Step 3: Add in consonants.
Start with one (or maybe a few) of the most common Spanish consonants: m, p, l, s, d or t would be a good place to start. Practice one (or a few) Spanish letter sounds until they seem to have them down. Try not to practice more than 5 at a time. Don’t add more letters into their stack until they seem to have a good grasp of the letters already in their stack.

A little brain science: Everyone forgets things after they have learned them. Forgetting is part of the learning process. The brain needs to forget and then relearn information between 3 and 5 times before it will remember that information for the “long-term.” Don’t get frustrated if they seem to have forgotten a letter they new 2 days ago. On the flip side, if they get frustrated, you might explain to them that forgetting is a natural part of the process of learning.

Step 4: Blend two letters together to make syllables. Start with consonant-vowel syllables.
There are two methods for this. Try both and see which your child seems to understand better. Practice the one that is easier for them first.
a) change the vowel: ma, me, mi, mo, mu
b) change the consonant: ma, pa, la, ta etc.

Step 5: Combine syllables to form nonsense words and have your child read them.
It is tempting to try and form real words, but remember, your child likely doesn’t know enough Spanish at this point to understand what they are reading anyway.

Reading Comprehension will come much later. The goal right now is simply decoding and fluency. We just want them to be able to smoosh the sounds together into a smooth sounding word. It doesn’t matter if it’s a real word.
Ex/ Put the letters “ma” and “du” together. Have your child read it. Say each syllable… “ma…. du.” Then push the letters together and have them try to say the word faster and faster until it’s blended together… “madu.”
** To make this step more advanced, go for 3 syllable words. Ex/ pe-lo-ta.

Step 6: Make 3 letter syllables.
After your child has mastered step 5. Try to make it a little tougher by adding a 3rd letter to the syllable chunks. For example: bla, cre etc. This will continue to help their fluency. For example: es-cri-bir

Nerdy side note:
Spanish syllables are often only 2 letters, but there are a few consonants that form blends and are likely to be seen in 3 letter syllables. Some of those are: bl-, pl-, fl, cl-, gl-, fr-, br, cr-, tr-, fr-, gr- as well as ch-, rr- and ll-. For example: gra-ba.

In addition the “weaker” vowels i and u tend to be found in 3 letter syllables because they are pronounced as one blended sound, even though you can hear them distinctly. For example: bue-no. In the word gra-cias we can see both of the above rules coming into play. If you want to learn more specifics about Spanish syllables: I found this website helpful! If you are just curious about how specific Spanish words are divided into syllables, this website is fun to play on.

Note to parents:

Although I’ve mentioned a bit of Spanish grammar, YOUR JOB, at home, is simply to help them practice blending sounds together fluently. You certainly don’t need to worry about teaching the grammar rules to your children. Leave those topics to your child’s teacher. An interesting aspect of the immersion process is that kids will pick up on those Spanish grammar rules without being taught directly. This happens to our kids in their fist language also. This is the same reason why kids know to say ELevator instead of eleVAtor or eLAvator in English. They don’t know the rule for why we emphasize the first syllable, they just do it naturally.

Alright fellow parents! I hope this helped. Spanish immersion kindergarten is a wild ride. But, as always….

You’ve got this!