FonoCultura is an early Spanish reader series that uses author Olga Díaz’s personal stories to bring together authentic language and cultural elements for the benefit of student learning. Like addalingua, Olga recognizes that language and culture are inextricably linked, and that developing learners ready to engage new perspectives, ideas, and cultures means helping students make this connection. It’s why we’re so excited to partner with Olga to bring the FonoCultura series to educators and families across the nation.
[Check out our interview with Olga here.]
Whether you’re a kindergarten classroom teacher in a Spanish immersion program, a world language teacher working with students exploring foundational skills in reading, or an immersion parent who wants to provide additional texts for your beginning readers in Spanish, these books can make a difference in the lives of early readers.
Take it from a mom
We recently caught up with a mom from NorthPointe Christian School who was eager to share how Fonocultura has impacted her son.
As a parent, it was wonderful watching my child develop his reading skills through the Fonocultura books. He formed a connection with the family of characters and was always eager to get to the next book.
It was less of a challenge to remind him to read each night because he actually wanted to show me his book. The book series offers exposure to culture, practice with language skills, and comprehension questions to gauge understanding.
His reading experience with the Fonocultura books resulted in an enjoyment of reading that will hopefully last a lifetime. We look forward to the continuation of the series!
If you’re interested in viewing samples of books in the FonoCultura series or licensing them for your classroom, start by joining addalingua’s community of immersion educators at my.addalingua.com/educator. Joining our community will provide you with access to license the texts and a host of other resources for your classroom and program.
For those interested, here are a few more details on the FonoCultura series:
FonoCultura, is the first series in the LectoCultura collection and is comprised of thirty texts arranged into three early stage reading levels, A-C.
Each level of ten books provides educators with an engaging narrative through which they are able to capture the interest of students during guided reading instruction by providing them with an authentic context for noticing, becoming aware of and practicing key word features (introduced in add.a.lingua kindergarten instructional frameworks). Written to encourage decoding at the syllabic rather than phonemic level, FonoCultura introduces young readers to a Colombian ranching family and sets the stage for future storylines in subsequent series.
Your license allows you to access:
black and white readers that can be printed, folded and stapled for use during in-class guided reading group instruction or at home individual student practice.
digital color and audio files of each text narrated by a native speaker for use in listening centers or in read-to-self instructional time
teacher’s guide (including syllable and picture cards with leer and syllable dividers for each text)
If you have any questions about the series, please don’t hesitate to reach out using the link below.
