Spanish Elementary Curriculum

Our Spanish elementary curriculum is easy for teachers to teach, fun for children to learn, proven academically to administrators, and shown to parents to have immediate results they can see and hear right away. Sing ‘n Speak Spanish® is a perfect Spanish program for children, giving them a bilingual foundation for their futures.

• Sing ‘n Speak Spanish® is an extensive, music-based Spanish Elementary Curriculum - a proven, complete, five-year curriculum – perfect as a continuing Spanish program for children, starting as early as kindergarten or as late as 6th grade. Continually developed and refined, we have taught it as a before or after school enrichment program in over 70 elementary schools to over 10,000 students in San Diego, California. More than 250 schools nationwide have chosen it as an in-school Spanish curriculum. It also works beautifully in a home school environment.

• Sing ‘n Speak Spanish is a versatile elementary curriculum which can be taught to K – 8th grade students during the school day or as a before or after school enrichment program. It is perfectly suited as a once or twice a week course during the school year. Click on Scope & Sequence to learn how to incorporate the Sing ‘n Speak Spanish program into your school.

• This ready-to-use Spanish program has everything you need to begin teaching.The teacher manuals contain simple-to-follow, detailed, hour-long lesson plans, each with its own dedicated set of colorful teaching aids – making it easy to teach different lessons to different groups of students and still stay organized. Pack your manuals, the teaching aids for the lessons you will be teaching, the music CDs, and any specified puppets – and you are ready to teach! The teaching materials are an excellent investment, as you can use them year after year and save hundreds of hours of prep time.

• Hand TPR (total physical response) is integral to vocabulary introduction, sentence building, the teaching of songs, and even games. With hand TPR, hand signs and gestures represent words – much like in a sign language. This allows teachers to speak Spanish most of the time in the classroom – using English only to ensure the input is comprehensible. Click on Teaching Tips/Videos to see how we use TPR to introduce vocabulary and teach songs.

• All activities are highly interactive. The variety of activities in each lesson results in a fast-paced, energetic class that is multi-sensory and reaches children of all learning styles. Each activity maximizes learning by engaging most of the students actively most of the time. Because it is so critical for the learning of a new language, we have carefully spiraled-in previous vocabulary and grammar to each and every interactive activity.

• Music brings it all together. Spanish is especially beautiful in song, and when children sing the catchy songs over and over again, the repetition they need for long term retention of vocabulary takes place easily – like magic. Our program integrates songs into the entire five year curriculum.

• Our adorable puppets play a special role in Year 1 and Year 2 Spanish, bringing a whimsical approach to the lessons – helping children overcome shyness and converse in Spanish. The puppets draw attention, relieve tension, and speed interaction. The lessons contain a number of humorous interactive puppet skits that children love. We have carefully assembled a collection of exceptional puppets which are available for purchase.

• Each lesson is imbued with humor. The funny visuals, puppet skits, songs, and activities offer a child-like charm that intrigues and tickles children and makes them laugh. When everyone laughs together, it is infectious and welcome. It is a key reason the lessons are so much fun for the students and it makes them come back for more.

• Student materials keep learning alive at home. With a music CD and a companion songbook, students retain the vocabulary and improve their pronunciation as they listen, sing-along, and memorize the songs. An enjoyable workbook keeps all assignments organized in one place, with fun and varied worksheets that allow students to read and write what they have learned in the classroom. The Childhood Adventure storybooks reinforce the lessons with delightfully humorous stories. The fun language drilling game, Translation Sensation®, offers additional reinforcement, always with built-in humor to make it fun. The student materials are like having a teaching assistant at home.

• Getting it right is a built-in goal. Through listening, speaking, singing, moving, dancing, playing games, writing, reading or enacting skits and stories, role-playing, and interactive puppetry, the course promotes a feeling of involvement, achievement, and success in children. Children get so absorbed in the variety of diverse activities in Spanish class that time flies by fast. They are a bit startled when class comes to an end. With the Sing ‘n Speak Spanish program, children feel good about themselves as they “get it”- and come back for more.

“Sing ‘n Speak Spanish® is the only language program, of which I am aware, that fully integrates music into an extensive curriculum that meaningfully integrates vocabulary and idioms as well as language forms and structures.“

Norman Léonard, Director of Outreach
Language Acquisition Resource Center
San Diego State University