For the past several years, we've enjoyed getting the notice that our curriculum was voted as one of the best in the Spanish Learning category! Thank you!
We really admire Practical Homeschooling Magazine, and their team, and their readers, so it's been a wonderful blessing each year to receive the notice that we're helping people, and they took the time to say so.
We think about how to improve each year, and we love getting feedback, which helps us to improve. Here are the areas we have been focusing on:
1) Spanish lessons should be engaging. Without actual communication, there's very little absorption. Each Flip Flop Spanish lesson focuses on USING the new language immediately. Now, can we make sure the student can immediately use each new Spanish vocabulary WORD? That's the goal! With games like Spanish Bingo and Charades and Flip Flop Spanish Speed, the students use the words in a motivated manner. This method creates a jumpstart to the learning process, and shortens the necessary exposure time to that particular word or lesson.
2) Spanish lessons must include Comprehensible Input. Does our lesson include input from the audio, or from the other students in the class? Our goal is to have audio input in Spanish, that's comprehensible. It's not to be too hard, not too easy. Juuuuuust right. (We talked about this in another blog post - it's called the x+1 theory.)
3) Spanish lessons should be Relational. Is each lesson inclusive of multiple people, multiple ages? We always include a range of ages and learning styles, so several students are learning the same vocabulary at the same time. The focus on learning the language the way we intend to use it is another paramount goal.