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How can we help our kindergarten learners be successful in their Spanish language journey?  In this post, we offer some tips from the trenches of that sunny-yet-conflicted zone called kindergarten. 1. Establish successful routines. All elementary children thrive on routine, but we’ve especially seen this in kindergarten.  These learners have moved from a primarily play-to-learn environment in […]

They changed the Spanish alphabet… As we recently blogged, in 2010 the Real Academia Española made some rather significant changes to the official Spanish alphabet.  Let’s review what those were: The letters ch and ll were removed; they are now considered “digraphs.” The new name of “y” is ye. The only name for “B” is be. The only name for “V” […]

#Langchat teachers gathered once again last Thursday to collaborate and converse about strategies and advice for conquering that first day back to school. – Follow the blog on Bloglovin – Day 1 Essentials #Langchat teachers shared some key techniques and activities to making the first day back in the classroom a success. On day one, […]

Are you a teacher who has recently subscribed to the Calico Spanish Stories Program and wants to know what content you can share with parents at home?  We often receive this question – time for a blog post to answer it! What’s Calico Spanish Stories? Calico Spanish Stories is our all-digital program developed to fill a […]

Answer: They’ve changed. All three of these are examples of language changes in recent years, at least in Spanish.  Thus, they’re the three biggest changes we made in our recent rather significant update to Calico Spanish Classic for Schools, our beginner level for elementary Spanish teachers (now retired from print but still available on TeachersPayTeachers). – Follow us […]

For their final chat of the year, #Langchat participants took time to reflect and share about all they have learned from the past school year. They also discussed what they hope to change in the upcoming school year. – Follow the blog on Bloglovin – Small and Large Changes Made in the Past Year #Langchat […]

Once upon a time, I thought I’d figured out how to teach elementary Spanish. Then, they asked me to teach preschool. Preschool is a different sort of animal. Standing in a line is a fluid concept. Rules my son’s 3-year-old class worked on last year: – We do not lick the wall. – We do not […]

In this summary, we show how #langchat participants explored the benefits of games in the language classroom. #Langchat teachers shared their favorite classroom games and strategies for increasing students’ proficiency through in-class games. – Follow the blog on Bloglovin How and When to Use Games in Class #Langchat participants shared many ideas on how and […]

The first time I taught a kindergarten Spanish lesson, I thought if I read the story La oruga muy hambrienta (The very hungry caterpillar) enough times, kids would learn something.  Right? – Follow us on Twitter – So, I faithfully came into my kindergarten classes, once a week for a 15-minute lesson, and read the book […]

On May 11, the #langchat discussion addressed the strategies used to help effectively teach a classroom full of students with various language levels. Participants considered the approaches and methods on how to keep materials fresh and exciting while meeting the needs of a diverse combined-Level group of students. – Follow the blog on Bloglovin Advantages […]