Course Description

Spanish 1 is designed to allow secondary students, who have little to no previous knowledge of Spanish, to acquire basic proficiency of high frequency words and present tense verbs in Spanish. Rather than learning “about” the language (i.e. memorizing vocab lists and verb charts), students will be listening to and reading whole sentences in Spanish from the very first unit using an approach known as Comprehensible Input to help them understand new words and begin to acquire Spanish much like they acquired their first language. Students will consistently be exposed to present tense verbs (both regular and irregular), various subject and object pronouns, noun-adjective agreement, common classroom commands, questions words, other high-frequency vocab words, cultural/geographical information, etc., all of which will be presented in context through texts, songs, videos, co-created stories, games and more. We will also read several novels, written especially for language learners that tell interesting stories using a limited list of high frequency vocab to build fluency more quickly. Students will be amazed at what they can understand!

To be successful in this class:

Come ready to participate fully, have fun, and learn some Spanish! Students must be willing and able to 1) attend class faithfully AND pay CLOSE attention during class, 2) give their best effort towards understanding what is being presented and indicate when they do not understand, 3) do the weekly homework assignments and submit them by the appointed time. (Spanish, like mathematics, is cumulative. Each unit builds on the previous units.) Students can expect to spend at least 1.5-2 hours outside of class working on homework assignments.

Grades: 9th Grade, 10th Grade, 11th Grade, 12th Grade

Fees: $425 + $50 materials fee

Course Credit: 1 CP Foreign Language Credit. View Honors Spanish 1 Course Description for details on honors requirements.