beginning reading and writing Spanish strand TEKS talk image

Knowledge and Skills Statement

Developing and sustaining foundational language skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking--beginning reading and writing. The student develops word structure knowledge through phonological awareness, print concepts, phonics, and morphology to communicate, decode, and spell.
Both decoding and encoding skills are needed to build a foundation in reading. Decoding is the process of translating written speech into verbal speech sounds by applying knowledge of letter-sound correspondences. In reading, this concept refers to word identification rather than word comprehension. Encoding is the process of using letter-sound knowledge to write or spell words. Students must understand the various spelling patterns and rules of the Spanish language to correctly construct words in their writing. It is important that students apply these rules consistently instead of using invented spelling because they may unknowingly write a word that is real but that they did not intend, causing confusion for their reader.