Estrellita

Estrellita is a supplementary, accelerated, beginning Spanish reading program for Pre-K through 1st grade students in Bilingual and Dual Language classrooms. Based on scientific learning and reading principles, Estrellita provides multisensory, in depth instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics and fluency. Because it was designed to meet the needs of children at all skill levels, layers of differentiated instruction are built into the program. Estrellita maps "pictures to beginning sounds" to assist children in making the connection from the known (picture) to the unknown (grapheme). Estrellita introduces vowels before consonants. The program also provides a built-in review process to ensure that students retain previously learned sounds. Estrellita is based on the core structure of the Spanish language and is not a direct translation. Estrellita writing component is aligned with and occurs concurrently with the reading process Estrellita's philosophy and methodology have always been to teach the letter sounds first and to prolong the teaching of letter names until children have "broken the code." Estrellita utilizes a syllabic approach to blending and segmentation which systematically builds upon itself. For over 20 years, and in over 2500 schools nationwide, Estrellita has been utilized in Pre-K, Kindergarten, and 1st grade classrooms successfully. Included in this number are over 850 school districts and 23 states (including Puerto Rico and Canada). Some of these schools have been using Estrellita since the early 90's. Estrellita has been adopted by theTexas and the New York Department of Education.