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.

Provide students with diverse sentences that include commonly confused terms. For example:

¿Por qué no viniste a mi fiesta?

Porque debía terminar un proyecto.

Carlos también juega béisbol, aunque no tan bien como Luis.

Ask students to read each of the sentences. Then, lead a discussion about the differences among the commonly confused terms. Ask students to work with a partner to find and underline commonly confused terms in a text provided by the teacher. Observe partner conversations and look for questions and comments related to the topic. Listen for statements such as “in this sentence sino is not separated into two words because it is a conjunction that introduces an opposite situation.”

Further Explanation

For this assessment, the students are required to understand the differences between commonly confused terms according to the context in which they are being used. Students must be able to exchange ideas with a partner in order to clarify and complete the task.

When students demonstrate phonetic knowledge, they are not creating written content that incorporates an understanding of phonetic principles, but rather reviewing content and determining how the principles have been applied. Students will do this when decoding (reading) words they encounter in various formats, from activities in the classroom to stories they read for pleasure.
Students are expected to understand the difference between commonly confused terms whose subtle differences in spelling and pronunciation make them difficult to identify without context. Among those terms are por qué (why), porqué (the reason for something), por que (for which) and porque (because). For example, ¿Por qué no fuiste al paseo? Porque tuve que cortar el pasto. A veces es difícil saber el porqué de los problemas. Ése es el motivo por que no te llamé. Other commonly confused terms are asimismo (also) and así mismo (in the same way); sino (but) and si no (if not); también (too) and tan bien (as good as).