As with all literacy instruction, when teaching sound-letter correspondence, you’ll need to provide oral-language supports for your English Learners. What those supports look like will depend on your students' literacy proficiency in their home language.
If your students are learning English and also learning to read for the first time in any language, their task is the same as for other beginning readers. They need to understand the alphabetic principle (opens in new window) (opens in new window) — that letters represent the sounds in spoken words. Teachers should follow general guidelines for teaching letter sounds, with these two modifications:
Be very clear with your instructions and use extra modeling. Teachers must be sure students understand directions for engaging in activities and completing work. Teacher modeling will be extremely helpful, as will be seeing other students engage in the tasks.
Teach students the words you’ll use to teach and illustrate foundational skills. For instance, when using pictures or objects to represent a letter name or sound (like octopus for the short ‘o’ sound), make sure your ELs can pronounce the words and understand their meaning. You might use flash cards with keyword pictures. In addition to helping all children remember the letters and sounds, this will contribute to your English Learners' oral-language development, which in turn will promote their literacy development.
If your students already have literacy skills in their home language, they likely understand the basics on sound-letter correspondence. Explain that reading in English works much the same way but is more complicated.
For Spanish speakers, a lot of what they know about sound-letter correspondences in Spanish also applies in English. Teachers should point this out to build students' confidence and help them transfer what they know from their home language. There are two important concepts to prime for students who already have Spanish literacy skills:
Most of the consonants represent identical or nearly identical sounds in Spanish and English. Teachers should provide some examples with Spanish and English words. For example: mamá and mother, papá and pop, tomate and tomato.
There are big differences in the vowels. In Spanish, each vowel has only one sound. In English, the five vowel letters (‘a’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘o’, and ‘u’) can make about 20 different vowel sounds, depending on the spelling patterns of the words in which they occur. If you are unfamiliar with the sound of each vowel in Spanish, listen and learn more about Spanish vowels (opens in new window) (opens in new window).
Remember that accurate pronunciation of sounds takes time. And even if a student can pronounce a sound or word, that doesn’t mean they fully understand it.
