The teachers conferred about their observation. In English, Trevonte knew how to solve new words by slowly articulating each part of the word. Teachers believed that Trevonte could probably learn to initiate unknown words in Spanish using the same tactic, if he was taught how. They crafted a teaching session that would explicitly teach Trevonte how to use this strategy in Spanish.

The lesson resulted in a shift. While Trevonte would continue to benefit from Spanish oral language development, vocabulary instruction, and carefully selected texts, teachers noticed processing changes that reflected the Transliteracy teaching. At a difficult word in a Spanish text, Trevonte began to initiate instead of wait for help. He learned he could try to solve a word by decoding - a strategy he was formerly using only in English. The approach shifted Trevonte’s use of word-solving strategies and also honored Trevonte’s linguistically complex identity; he developed pride as a reader and pride as a bilingual.