Blog

Feliz Navidad for most of the learners and teachers we know and love, the semester is wrapping up.  As we wrap up, many of us are also wrapping something else – the Christmas presents!  Whatever this holiday season holds for you, know that we appreciate you. – Follow us on Twitter – – Like Calico […]

2021 update: It’s been four years since Level D launched, and four years since this blog post originally went live. Since then, thousands of people have viewed this post, making it one of our most popular resources to date! In Level D, children meet Ofelia la oveja blanca (the white sheep) and her friends. Some […]

Elementary Spanish teachers, how is your school year going?  You’re a quarter of the way through! As you move through this semester with your early Spanish learners, we wanted to help you help them with our YouTube Basics Playlist.  This is something we’ve put together to help you organize your class around target-language music.  This […]

I am the curriculum specialist in charge of developing Stories here at Calico Spanish, but I am also a mom to three young kids. For the last few years, we participated in a homeschool co-op that met once a week.  At the co-op, I taught Spanish.  For my younger age group (K-4th grade), I used the […]

How do you teach children clothing words in Spanish? Well, you approach it like any other set of vocabulary – in context. – Follow us on Twitter – There’s some spirited questioning in the early language (and secondary!) field about how best to present some concepts.  Daily activities, particularly reflexive verbs, is one.  You’ll hear […]

Kids learn Spanish every day.  They learn it in elementary classrooms, in play groups, and in day cares.  They learn it with Pepe the brown dog in Stories.  But kids learn Spanish in specific ways, under specific conditions, and if those conditions aren’t met, language acquisition simply won’t happen.  That’s the science. Still, myths swirling around […]

Mentoring New World Language Teachers Teaching isn’t an easy profession.  It’s no wonder so many teachers leave in their first few years of teaching.  What if they had a solid support system, experienced teachers ready with strategies, ideas, and a sympathetic ear?  In a recent langchat, world language teachers discussed how they might be that […]

Almost every world language class has learners that span a spectrum of proficiencies and needs. Strategies teachers use to meet that variety of needs are collectively called differentiation.  In a recent #langchat, world language teachers discussed how to use differentiation in the interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational modes. – Follow the blog on Bloglovin – Defining […]

It’s a widely accepted truth at this point: children need less screen time.  This is a challenge, though, because not all screen time is created equal.  For example, I feel fairly safe saying there’s not a square inch of social media that a child needs to occupy.  In fact, as children get older, more screen time is linked […]

Across the world language teaching profession, teachers are eagerly looking for more and better ways to provide comprehensible (or better yet, comprehended) input to their learners.  They know that acquisition only happens when learners assign meaning to words and structures, and that requires comprehension.  This topic inspired the November 23 #langchat.  Let’s see what teachers […]