There are a LOT of ways to change up our homeschool when a semester ends, and a new one begins.
Here are just a few little tidbits to read and help you focus your efforts in all areas, not just Spanish Learning. Language development is REDUCED by ANY screen time. This is why we are admonished as new mothers to monitor and limit our toddlers' TV viewing.... So, when you're learning a LANGUAGE... and screens inhibit language development, a screen should be the LEAST method used, not the MOST.
Continue reading. You don't have to take just my word for it!
Screens and Learning: What's the scoop?
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/08/28/343735856/kids-and-screen-time-what-does-the-research-say
Here's the more important paragraph:
At the beginning and end of the five-day study period, both groups of kids were shown images of nearly 50 faces and asked to identify the feelings being modeled. Researchers found that the students who went to camp scored significantly higher when it came to reading facial emotions or other nonverbal cues than the students who continued to have access to their media devices.
"We were pleased to get an effect after five days," says Patricia Greenfield, a senior author of the study and a distinguished professor of psychology at UCLA. "We found that the kids who had been to camp without any screens but with lots of those opportunities and necessities for interacting with other people in person improved significantly more."
Screens vs Paper in Teens: A study was undertaken in 2013 with tenth-graders in Norway, where the students were divided into two groups. One group read two texts (1,400–2,000 words) in print and the other group read the same texts as PDFs on a computer screen. In the reading comprehension test that was administered, the students who read on paper scored significantly better than those who read the texts digitally. It was easier for those who read on paper to remember what they had read. Mangen et al. say that this is because paper gives spatio-temporal markers while you read. Touching paper and turning pages aids the memory, making it easier to remember where you read something. Having to scroll on the computer screen makes remembering more difficult.
(Source: https://insights.uksg.org/articles/10.1629/uksg.236/)
As for our family of seven, we use the "screens" as often as we use them when my husband and I were in school back in the 90s - for what we called back then "word-processing." We enjoy a few apps here and there, and Thursdays are our one day of Video Games.
As the year begins anew, I will look forward to making more and more textbooks and classics hands-on, and minimizing reading from screens.
