Fourth Grade - Spanish Language Arts

Fourth-grade students in SFUSD Spanish Biliteracy and Dual Immersion Pathways Programs engage in 85 minutes of daily English literacy instruction and 30 min of Spanish literacy instruction three times a week. 

During the 85-minute English word study, reading, and writing block that includes reading, writing, and differentiated small group instruction, students practice reading independently, participate in shared reading, and interactive read-aloud, and receive word study explicit instruction. 

There is a Spanish literacy instruction time, students engage in a 30-minute SLA/Transfer/Phonics block three times a week that includes explicit and systematic phonics instruction focusing on word parts. Spanish phonics and word parts instruction is anchored in continuous text following the syllabic approach framework. During cross-linguistic transfer time, the teacher provides explicit cross-linguistic transfer instruction and gives students the opportunity to make explicit connections between both languages. 

In addition, it is recommended to focus on knowledge building during science and social science through reading and writing in Spanish. 

Phonics instruction is delivered daily to ensure all students become independent readers and writers.  The methodology includes systematic and explicit instruction that supports research-based approaches to teaching Spanish phonics. 
Children progress at a much faster rate in phonics when the bulk of instructional time is spent on applying the skills to authentic reading and writing experiences, rather than on isolated skill and drill work. 

Adding dictation as a routine builds students’ writing automaticity. This culturally relevant strategy can be used as a formative assessment to collect information on student progress. It supports students' independence through the process of self-correction. Dictation helps tighten the relationship between sounds and graphemes.If you can say it, you can write it.

Strategic and targeted small group instruction based on analysis of student data (both formal and informal). 

During independent reading practice and learning centers, the teacher gathers a group of students with similar strengths and needs and instructs them on a skill or strategy. 

Small group instruction lessons are designed to provide scaffolds for students to apply the skill or strategy in their own independent work.  

Grouping remains flexible throughout the school year to accommodate student needs

Explicit cross-linguistic transfer instruction is key in supporting students in making connections between languages. Students engage in contrastive analysis to observe similarities and differences between both languages.
Additionally, students are able to devote more cognitive processing time toward the more complex orthography and morphology systems of English that require more time than the more transparent systems of Spanish.
 

Cognates are words in two or more languages that share a historical root and, as such, are similar in meaning,
orthography and/or pronunciation (Lubliner & Hiebert,2011). 

Taking into consideration that more than half to two-thirds of the vocabulary of an educated adult native English speaker are cognates in Spanish, explicit instruction of cognates will support and accelerate students' transference of skills from one language to the other.

During the writing block, students are engaged in creating writing pieces from the Common Core State Standards that follow the writing process. This writing block includes lessons that provide direct, explicit instruction and guided practice in skills and strategies connected to the genre.  

Grammar lessons, embedded in the writing curriculum. 

Taller del escritor units begin with a fundamental study of sentences followed by ways to explore more robust sentences with a variety of punctuation marks. 

These assessments should be used at least three times during the school year. As a diagnostic evaluation at the beginning of the year, and as a measure of progress for mid and end-of-year.