There are many sounds in English that don’t exist in Spanish, and vice versa. Take the sound the letter “z” makes in English, or the rolled “r” in Spanish.
In the Southside independent school district in San Antonio, teachers highlight these differences for their Spanish-speaking students. It’s a key part of the school system’s approach to the “science of reading.”
Teachers in the district—where about 30% of students are multilingual learners—give early elementary schoolers systematic phonics instruction, a foundational piece of early reading lessons. They teach beginning readers which letters represent which sounds and how to blend them together into words, whether they’re teaching in English, or in Spanish in the district’s dual-language program.