Chat Room: Early Literacy, en Español

¡Colorín Colorado! (a nonsense phrase that marks the end of a story read aloud in many Latino cultures) seeks to bring solid literacy information to Spanish-speaking parents. It's a brand-new offshoot of Reading Rockets (www.readingrockets.org), a Web site that promotes literacy—in English—to parents, teachers, and librarians. Reading Rockets, which is sponsored by WETA, a public television station in Washington, DC, focuses on struggling readers and what can be done to motivate them to read.

"Thirty-six percent of all fourth graders read below grade level," says Noel Gunther, Reading Rockets' executive director. "That's an enormous level of failure, and it's concentrated in areas full of [new] English-language learners." Since Reading Rockets first appeared in 1999, Gunther had felt that it was essential to create a Spanish version that acknowledged the cultural differences between Latinos and other Americans.

It was a great goal, but meeting it took a lot longer than Gunther and his colleagues anticipated. "We started out thinking we'd gather materials already on the Web," he explains. But they found very little about literacy that Spanish-speaking parents without college degrees could understand. "We had to write almost all of it ourselves," Gunther says.

The ¡Colorín Colorado! site is very attractive, featuring Caldecott-winning illustrator David Diaz's bold graphics, similar in style to those he created for Nancy Andrews-Goebel's picture book The Pot That Juan Built (Lee & Low, 2002). Every page of the site is available in both Spanish and English; the Spanish version comes up first, and English-speaking visitors can click on an "In English" button. A videotaped interview with author Pat Mora is available in both languages. Elsewhere are suggestions for parents and caregivers for activities that will teach young children about language and set the stage for literacy and a love of reading. The site encourages parents to talk, sing, and read to their children every day, and it recommends books for parents and others to share.

The need for quality Spanish-language literacy sites will soon become even more acute. The U.S. Department of Commerce has projected that the Hispanic population will nearly double from 31.4 million in 2000 to 58.9 million by 2025. A recent report issued by the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics (nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2003008) shows that 92 percent of Latino children whose mothers were born outside the U.S. speak mostly Spanish at home. About 40 percent of these students live with parents with less than a high school education who aren't certain how to help their children become literate. Research studies have shown that the lower a family's income and the less education parents have, the less likely they are to talk to their children enough to stimulate language development, and the more likely to plop them in front of a TV set.

I asked Gunther what many of you may already have wondered: Why spend so much time and money (nearly $20,000) to create a Web site for a population that seldom uses the Internet? "There are now 15 million American Hispanics online and their number's growing at about 20 percent a year," he counters. And many Hispanics have Internet access where they work or at the local public library. Gunther admits that low-income parents are less likely to spend much time online, but that's where schools and public librarians can help.

He encourages librarians, teachers, and community leaders to visit ¡Colorín Colorado!, print out its pages of advice and hand them out to parents, grandparents, and others who care about children and literacy. You can also link to sites such as the Cooperative Children's Book Center's "40 Spanish/English Bilingual Books" (www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/bibs/40books/bilingual.htm) and Multnomah County (OR) Library's Spanish-language homework site "Tareas Escolares" (www.multcolib.org/libros/ref/sphomework.html). Both are a good beginning, but we need more educational sites in Spanish for kids and parents—a lot more.