I have been taking classes for a reading endorsement. This term we are studying more about Professional Learning Communities. I was in a mock up group of K-1 teachers.

In researching phonemic awareness in teaching young students Spanish, I found one author, José Antonio Herrera Lara whose article titled V Jornadas de Lectoescritura y Matemáticas (Journeys in reading, writing and math) was posted online in October 5,6 and 7 of 2004. Herrera Lara has other articles in Spanish that are about students with disabilities learning to read.

Here are some strategies for early phonemic awareness en español:

Actividades de manipulación de letras

1) A buscar el modelo

Materials: letter cards

Directions: one letter is the goal "model" and the students find that letter as many times as they can from a spread of similar shaped letters. This is a visual-spacial activity, do not say the name or the sound of the letter.

Variation: students find the letter in words in the classroom

2) Letra a letra

Materials: Cards with student names. Technique stretch out the sounds from the letters in names that will be introduced and create a bit of a scenario of what makes that sound, rrrr could be a cat purring, j j j j j could be something stuck in your throat

3) Afina tu oído: Directions: Do #1 but this time give the sound or the letter name, what ever you are going to be working on.

4. El cerdito come letras

The hungry pig likes color words, or names, or nouns. Whatever pig puppet you have eats whatever word type you are studying at the time.

5) Pintamos el Camino:

Materials: big letters, chalk (or yard), large area where it is ok to write on the ground with chalk

directions: student in pairs

Spread out the big letters on the ground

A vocalizes to B where to begin using sounds or letter names

A verbalizes to B the route to take and B draws it or connects it with yarn, then the students "read" the route taken

6) Utiliza tu memoria

Materials: letter cards, (or syllable, word or sentence cards)

Directions: student in pairs

A puts out 3 letters for B to "memorize"

A removes one letter and B guesses which letter is missing (or syllable, word or sentence is missing)

7) A sumar
Materials: a chart similar to the following, at first leaving off the last column. Show the students how the graph can be used to form different open syllables (later add an ending consonant to form closed syllables)

	o	a	i	m
f			fi	fim
p		pa
j

8) Dómino silábica:

Materials: a set of "dominoes" with syllables on each side with lots of repetitions.

Students play dominoes and make a train vocalizing the syllables on each side of the card as they go.

I made a template for this in a Google doc. The idea is that you just use words that are common, syllables or letters. This is an experiment at this point, but do a search and replace for seven words that you want the kids to practice using the numbers as the search and the words as the replace.
Then copy and paste it into another document and enlarge the font to 72. Cut every two columns and every row and it makes a standard set of dominoes with repeats. Print on to card stock and away you play. Similar rules as dominoes. Each person takes between 4 and 7 pieces (depending on how big the group is.) A double (of your choice) starts. Each person matches either end of the playing area. If you don't have a match, you take one from the bank. Play continues until one person runs out of dominoes and they get a point for every domino everyone else has left. Player with the most points at the end, wins.

9) Sopa de letras

Materials: a grid of letters

activity: students count all the letters that make a given sound. Include different letters that make the same sound.

All of these ideas were from José Antonio Herrera Lara's article written in Spanish. I can't take credit for any of them. Although I did add "words and sentences" since his work was predominately on letter sounds and syllables.