Re: Book Selection for Spanish speaking students

["T.K. Cassidy" <tkcassidy@WHITFIELD.K12.GA.US>]

Sue,

I just went through this dilemna this past month. We were
awarded an REA grant to improve our reading scores. One
component is to reach out to families and siblings of our
students. Since we have such a large fluid Hispanic
population, they are a large part of the program. I
struggled with whether it was better to have no Spanish
books so they would learn quicker through immersion (maybe
faulty thinking but mine :-)) or to buy bilingual books
with the intent to make them available to all. I hope the
Spanish speakers will learn better English and some of our
native English speakers will begin to experience Spanish
as well.

Two of the great things that came out of the grant were a
full time reading coach and a full time family literacy
coordinator who speaks Spanish. The FLC pointed out that
if you don't read well in your native language there is
nothing to indicate you will do better in a language you
do not know. The RC pointed out that recent reading
research says children who are readers in their native
language transfer that skill when they work on reading in
English.

The end result is that I now have $2500 worth of bilingual
books on their own prominently visible shelves - which I
will leave until the parents know it is there and feel
comfortable with coming in to check out the materials as
well as the children. When the collection becomes better
known, I will add them into the regular collection as they
should be.

I hope this long winded diatribe makes sense and helps.

Best....

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