Most of my students in the dual-immersion are Spanish speakers. Like any classroom teacher, we have a ton on our plate and not enough time to teach everything and deal with the issues and “social” lessons that come up on a daily basis. It can be difficult to ensure that my native English speakers to be exposed in a methodical manner to the most important or used words in the Spanish language on a daily basis. Yes, they hear Spanish all day long. Yes, we do almost all learning in Spanish…. but is that enough? In the upper grades, they will be focused on English language academics, so it is super important to create a strong foundation in Spanish for the Pre-K, Kindergarten, and first-graders.
Ideas for Practicing High-Frequency Words on a Weekly Basis:
- Go- Fish
- Memory
- Rainbow Writing
- Read, Build, Write
- Flashcards or sight-word ring of words
- High-Frequency word practice pages
- Write sentences with each word
- HFW Graphing pages
- Easy Sentences with the HFW’s
- Easy Spanish Comprehension passages for emergent readers
Many of these ideas could be done as literacy centers and some could be sent home as homework.
Anything else? What do you do to practice HFW in your Spanish immersion or bilingual classroom?
