My curriculum search is over and I have chosen Bob Jones Spanish 1 for my high schoolers for this fall in co-op. It has most of the things (included within the program) that I have been adding in to my classes: Bible verses, which I had been including for copywork and memorization, Missionary dialogue, just to name two major components. It appears to prepare the students better ahead of the oral or written exercises with the details and reasons for concepts (for each particular lesson) in the learning of the language; some of the things that don't seem to follow the rules of grammar / are irregular. I don't have a test package, yet, so can't give a good review on those, yet.
This past year, I had so many frustrations with Spanish is Fun, which was what the co-op already had on hand. There were many mistakes in the teacher's key, Fairly important words thrown in that had not been introduced, yet, pictures to be identified or labeled that were not specific enough, instructions before exercises that did not make sense, and even a couple of vocab words that were typed wrong. I'd print up special charts that I found on the internet to help identify the problem words in the book, even though they could be found in the glossary in the back. I also handed out verb charts...or directed the students to the webpage where I found them (about 1/3 of the way down the page).
The audios did not match the dialogue in the lessons so often. Sometimes it was close, and Madre had been changed to Padre, or other characters names were switched altogether. I could, and did work with that, and warned the students ahead of time. The reviews for the test were fairly useless, imho, like silly word searches or even a "fortune telling" exercise in one chapter reveiw. I completely changed the tests after the first two units, adding in more vocabulary and other things that seemed to be more specific.
The Spanish 2 and 3 teacher had already switched over to Bob Jones for her classes, mainly because Bob Jones is one of the few curriculum providers (of those that market to homeschoolers) that had a level three. After looking over a friend's copy of Level one, I was quite impressed. It will also prepare the students better for Spanish 2 and 3 at our co-op, as Spanish is Fun had just barely introduced the Preterit tense. Bob Jones goes farther than that in year 1. I'm not sure where Spanish 2 begins, but I imagine it will review what was introduced in the last chapters of BJU 1. I will be sure to let you all know how it actually went...this time next year *grin.*
For Junior High level:
I had originally planned to use The Learnables year 1 for my junior high class, but another class (I think the 4-6th graders) were already using that. So, I have been testing a new, hot off the presses (in September, 2005) curriculum called El Español Fácil. It can be done independently by older students, or spread out over several years for younger students. The main concept is to build a notebook with various activity sheets and copywork. This is what I had done with them last semester on my own, but this program has some fun (maybe a little cheesy) dialogue, and added more structure to our notebooks. This program contains phonograms in it which you can copy onto cardstock for the students. I did not use these. Some people might love them, and I may use them next year.
Since this program is so new, there are typos throughout. Where it should say Spanish in some places, or México, it says French or France. The curriculum is put out by the same group that made The Easy French. So, pretty understandable, I suppose.
It worked for my junior high students pretty well, but I still had to add in some other activities. The cut-paste-color type suggestions in the curriculum were really pretty juvenile for this age group after a while, and I felt the activities were way too simplistic and brief. I added in extra geography and cultural trivia, as well, and brought in some photos from The Yucatán that I'd matted for a gallery showing. I cooked some of the food specialties, brought in unique fruits and drinks, magazine or newspaper articles in Spanish, and taught them some silly songs that I'd learned over the years. All this to keep some variety and depth to the class, and help, well, make it fun.
The kids had learned some very basic dialogue via the CD's, but on the last few weeks, I added in some beginning grammar of simple sentence building, to show them what types of things I'd be teaching them in Spanish 1. I do believe I can begin this earlier in the year with my next group of students. I may even use some of the activities from Spanish is Fun, since I have the quirks all figured out in my teacher's manual and binders. We'll see. I want to build a better bridge in the transition from lower school Spanish to Junior High to the Spanish 1 High School level.
These are just some of the things that I've done and have worked for the classes I've taught.
Results will vary, depending on how much time you and each student puts into *any* program.
If you'd like, feel free to read some of the older reviews of some of the Spanish curricula and resources that I've used in the past or incorporated into this schoolyear, and shared links to online sources that I've come across several times in the last few months, here, here, and here.
I have used some OOP resources, as well, and have not written about them, yet.
My favorite internet site with worksheets to fill in is Enrique Yepes' pages (so far).
Another favorite site is Spanish Pronto. You can find fun activities (for a small fee) at Enchanted Learning.
Any questions or comments? Do you have co-op experiences and resource ideas of your own to share? I'd love to hear about them.
Señora Javamom
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