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[lucia79]

I was told by a head of a foreign lang. dept., that 1st graders do not have words in their English books because they will confuse it with Turkish. ???? I don't understand this. I asked about even having three-letter words and the answer was NO. How on earth are the kids going to confuse it with Turkish? For example, it's not like German (I'm just picking a language related to English for argument's sake) where a kid may confuse the spelling of house with haus. There are children all over the world who learn how to read and write in multiple languages at the same time, so I was dumbstruck when I heard this nonsense. Does anyone teach books with words to 1st graders?

[Yaz]

I teach 1st grade and my approach is to delay teaching reading for about 2 months. The book we are using, Happy House, introduces word cards in the 4th unit which is about right I think.

Consider that Turkish children start to read and write in first grade all together. The majority of them have no exposure to the alphabet or pre-reading in Kinde. The amazing thing is that all the kids are literate by December. So because they are on a fast track to learning their own language, and it can be very intense, I go easy with the written word. When they learn Turkish, all of a sudden they catch on to the English quickly.
Hope that helps. Good luck!