» How many lessons are in the Level One Teacher's Manual?
Answer:
The Teacher's Manual has 15 chapters. Each chapter has between 9 and 12 lessons segments. The lesson segments include Songs, Calendar, Questions, Numbers, Alphabet, Games, Verbs, Money, Opposites, Zoo, Activities and a Closing. Most lesson segments can be repeated once or twice during the course of a given chapter.
If you follow our 20-30 minute schedule, you will teach 160 days worth of lessons to complete Level One. If you follow the 45 to 60 minute schedule, it will take you 80 days to complete the program and you will have less repetition of lessons.
» Do you plan a level two and when would that be available?
Answer:
Level two is written. Our goal is to finalize the development of Level 2 by the 2010-2011 school year.
» Can you give me a general idea of topics covered during the program?
Answer:
The goal of the program is to develop receptive language skills and allow students to begin producing in Spanish in response to questions. They will cover the first 15 letters of the alphabet, learn their numbers through 50, with the goal that they really know the number names, not just how to count in sequence.
You will teach simple verb constructions and practice creating phrases using poder, necesitar, querer and gustar (to be able, to need, to want and to like). You will expose students to a range of action verbs taken from the Verbos flash cards. You will study colors, practice counting coins in Spanish and learn many calendar concepts. Students will begin to learn opposites towards the end of Level One. Parts of the body are introduced, as well as a number of basic question formats.
» What types of activities are in the Calico Spanish Student Activity Pack?
Answer:
The activity pack is primarily a set of worksheets with the song lyrics so that students can create their own song books. There are 30 songs on the Mi guitarrí music CD and every song has an individual page in the activity pack. In addition, there is an activity for farm animals (color and cut), parts of the body (cut and paste), and an activity to create signs for use in a Red Light, Green Light game.
» What is the methodology for Calico Spanish?
Answer:
Calico Spanish is based on the Natural Approach as described by Tracy Terrell and Stephen Krashen (1983) in their research on language acquisition.
The key concept in the Natural Approach is that students learn language only when they are exposed to messages in that language which they can decipher and understand. Calico Spanish is designed to use visual aids, activities, songs and mini-dramatizations to equip you to present lessons to your students so that they can understand the basic concepts you are attempting to communicate. You will regularly use Spanish words the students haven’t heard before, but you will introduce new vocabulary along with visual cues, hand signals, repetition and dramatizations such that they begin to naturally grasp the basic meaning of your communications. If you are pointing to a picture of water and repeatedly saying, "Agua," students will begin to associate that word with water. When you follow up with a mini-dramatization of drinking a cup of water and then offer studets a cup of water, they will confirm their suspicion that “agua” must indeed mean "water."
» What are your goals for students with this program?
Answer:
The primary goal of Calico Spanish is to develop a student's receptive language skills. This means the students will begin to understand messages spoken to them in Spanish. Once a student has a basic framework for understanding a language, they can begin to build confidence in creating their own messages in that language. Initially, you will expect your students to respond to the Spanish language, and eventually, you will assist them in creating their own simple sentences to communicate their own ideas in Spanish.
Krashen and Terrell advocate building this type of language comprehension prior to rigorous grammar studies. Calico Spanish follows this approach and you will not find any formal grammar studies in this program though you will present simple sentence building exercises. Once students have completed Calico Spanish Levels 1 and 2, they will be ready to begin studying Spanish grammar.
» What do you expect from students during lessons?
Answer:
Calico Spanish focuses on comprehension. You will use Spanish as much as possible, but you do not need to require students to limit themselves to Spanish during the program. Allow students to ask questions in English. If your skills are sufficient, you can repeat the question back to them in Spanish and then answer them in Spanish. Whenever you can, encourage your students to use the words they know in Spanish, but don’t expect fluency or frustrate them by expecting them immediately to be able to utilize the new vocabulary as fluently as you might be doing with the scripts. These abilities build gradually, and the initial focus of the lessons is helping the children to understand Spanish and practice pronouncing words through songs, reciting or repeating words from the calendar and answering simple questions with very simple responses.
Students should be allowed a silent period during their Spanish acquisition. (See Krashen and Terrell's work on the Natural Approach to learn more about this phase of language acquisition.) We attempt to shorten the silent period through our engaging songs and activities, but in reality, the duration of the silent period can vary greatly from student to student.
» Can I use Calico Spanish with children younger than 5 or non-readers?
Answer:
Yes you can. The program is very visual and interactive, so that a non-reader can participate and learn successfully. We have preschools that are using the program with modifications because they love the visuals, games and music so much. The visual aids are well designed and students can comprehend the meaning by the images regardless of their reading skills.
» Do you offer a money back guarantee?
Answer:
Yes we do. Please read the specifics of our policy on our legal page.
» Why is your CD called Mi guitarrí rather than Mi guitarra?
Answer:
We named the CD after our version of a traditional Spanish singing game of musical chairs. In a Spanish textbook from 1918, we located a poem and the instructions for this wonderful game in which students play musical chairs while listening to the sound of Mi guitarrí (a pet name for the singer’s guitar.)
Students listen and finally the singer says, “…to the rhythm of my guitarrí-CO!” and upon hearing the addition of the syllable, “CO,” students scramble for a seat.
Answer:
In Spanish, titles are written with a sentence case. In other words, only the first letter of titles is capitalized.
» How is the book ¡Corre, perro, corre! (Go, Dog! Go!) used?
Answer:
Go, Dog, Go (Corre, Perro, Corre) is read aloud to the students during the program as a method of introducing very simple literature and allowing stuents to see that they are learning enough language to comprehend a storybook. The book illustrates opposites, colors and more.
» Do you have stories in your curriculum?
Answer:
The curriculum is not story based. We do have plans to develop a supplemental literature
component that would include picture books in Spanish. In the meantime, we will post our favorite storybooks from time to time on our blog.
» What verbs are included in the Verbos flash card set?
Answer:
The Verbos flash cards are published by Trend Enterprises, Inc. We don't have their permission to issue a complete list of included verbs, but there are a total of 93. Some of my favorite verbs in that set are correr, comer, abrir, bailar, cortar, dar, dibujar, escribir, leer, llamar, limpiar, ir, pegar, nadar, reír, tirar, tomar, voltear, servir, plantar, and empujar.
There are also some less commonly used verbs such as deslizar and estornudar. The images on the cards do a wonderful job of illustrating what each verb means.
» What words are included in the Calico Spanish Flash card set?
Answer:
The Calico Spanish Flash card set goes with the program and includes an image and word for each letter of the alphabet, eleven colors/shapes, eleven faces to answer the question "How are you?" morning, noon, night, four sets of opposites, 21 animals and the numbers 1-15.
In addition, we provide you with present tense verb conjugations of the verbs poder, necesitar, querer and gustar (to be able, to need, to want and to like). There are a few additional images that are useful during various lessons such as the clock, Señor Reloj and a beautiful little farm scene titled La granja. In total our flash card set includes 122 flash cards.
