Hilario designed a lesson that would honor Francisca's strength in blending sounds in Spanish and apply this to English.

Second grade teacher Hilario asked his student Francisca (pseudonym) if she would like to do some readings with him, in both Spanish and English. Francisca was excited to do so, as she remembered his prior student, Isabela, working with him. She immediately told her classmate Isabela, -Mira, yo también voy a trabajar con el maestro-, which made Isabela rush over and ask -Uuuu, ¿puedo también trabajar yo?- Hilario kindly told her that he was going to give another student a try and her response was “ahhh, ¿por qué?” and returned back to her seat. He turned his attention to Fransica, and explained that he would be listening to her read two texts. She seemed happy, because it involved practicing English, something she enjoyed.

Hilario presented a text in English “The Brain” and a text in Spanish “Los Titeres”. He chose these texts hoping to learn more about Francisca’s use of foundational skills. He decided to record Francisca’s reading of the texts, in his words, “as a way to help me identify any strengths”. Hilario noted down his observations in the Transliteracy Observation Framework for Foundational Skills. In the analysis section at the bottom of the framework, Hilario identified that in Spanish, Francisca had a strength in blending letter sounds, particularly in consonant blends and digraphs:

Hilario recognized that Spanish orthography calls for joining syllables to solve words. Within syllable decoding, he recognized a strength of blending sounds. He turned to the prompting model to design a lesson in which he would honor Francisca’s skill in blending sounds in Spanish and teach her to apply in English, especially with English-specific consonant blends and digraphs. He planned his teaching moves for five steps of a Transliteracy lesson:

Hilario’s lesson illustrates how teachers can observe foundational skills in both languages, identify a strength on which to build, and design a teaching plan to leverage it. In addition, a few factors seemed to contribute to lesson's effectiveness:

1) Context. Hilario’s lesson began with continuous text (the readings), brought the skill into focus, and then returned to applying in a contextualized paragraph. Using this in-out-in approach teaches students that foundational skills are in service to reading and writing continuous text.

2) Meaning. Hilario consistently checked to make sure that Francisca comprehended the words and the sentences. When she was unclear, he explained or invited her to talk through together, often using Spanish ("do you know what 'laugh' means? It’s 'sonreir'"). Foundational skills will resonate most when students understand what they are reading or writing.

3) Bilingualism. In the lesson, Hilario demonstrated bilingualism as an asset. In fact, in a prior lesson, Hilario shared with Francisca his own story of growing up bilingual and noticed how this fostered her motivation. When we teach Transliteracy, even in foundational skills, we honor bilingual identities.