This year, we tried a new curriculum for Spanish: Excelerate Spanish. I’m using it for high school, but you could use it for middle school, or advanced elementary school. Why do I say that? Because learning a language is learning a language!  We used Level 1 this school year, so this is a review of it.

Unique Teaching Style

This program is a combination of video, workbook, drawing activities and motions that go with the vocabulary to help it stick. Each lesson has a video lesson where the instructor teaches Spanish vocabulary paired with a hand motion. This is not sign language, but a physical movement to help you and your student remember the word. The idea is that adding a physical movement to your leaning helps the brain retain language better. It is kind of like when I taught my kids baby sign language and it helped expand their vocabulary.

Each lesson is also based around a short story, and the vocabulary goes with that story. For example, going fishing, taking a bus, or attending a baseball game are each the basis of one lesson. Your student watches the video to learn the vocabulary and see the students act out a story with this week’s vocabulary. You can then read that story, or a similar one, in the lesson book to reinforce vocabulary. I recommend keeping the lesson book close while watching the video so you can go back and forth if you need to.

It was also a powerful teaching tool that many of the stories have an element of surprise or silliness. This also helps the brain retain words that it might not otherwise. As a teacher, I love the use of ridiculous stories to help my student retain what they are learning.

I also liked that the workbook is not just writing sentences in Spanish. For my dyslexic kid, that is exhausting. The workbook instead has activities like drawing, matching, multiple choice and other short answer format questions to reinforce the student’s understanding. There are opportunities to write but it is not overwhelming. I really liked the workbook format.

How Secular and Responsible Is It?

There were some basic things I wanted in a Spanish program, and Excelerate has delivered those. First, I wanted something secular.  I will give Excelerate a 9/10 on this. A tiny amount of cultural Christianity sneaks into the lessons, and I don’t think the maker even realized it. For example, students make a halo above their heads to show they are patient. I honestly had to explain to my kid what the gesture referred to, though your child may have seen such angelic symbolism in cartoons and catch on. However, I am giving it a 10/10 for not being problematic. Years ago we used another program for Spanish that really glorified the Spanish Conquistadors and referred to the Native Mexicans as heathens. Thankfully, this program has none of those problems.

Is it Good for Beginners?

Honestly, this program starts a bit fast for a true beginner.  This program was perfect for us, because my daughter had used another Spanish program to do very basic stuff like counting, colors, the alphabet, greeting and animals. This made the first few lessons go faster and were just a bit easier because she knew a few of the words. My high school Spanish has also been necessary as I felt at times I need to explain something more in depth than the program went. I think the teacher writing it assumes the instructor knows Spanish and can answer questions better than the answer key actually tells you. As a person with very basic Spanish skills, I purchased a Webster’s Spanish-English Dictionary for Students and it helped us a lot with this program.

What Else?

One thing that is odd with this program is that the lessons toss in random numbers, colors, and other adjectives as you go. If you spent a year learning those basics, I do not see any reason you can’t call this program Spanish 2, as it goes further in to depth and teaches real world situations that were not covered in the other programs I have used with kids with learning disabilities. I do not love how this program introduces verb conjugation, but that isn’t hard to supplement. I do know there are other programs that go faster and dive deeper that also call themselves Spanish 1. I have decided that level one of any foreign language is a social construct and we can do what we want. Other programs didn’t work for us, so this is what my kid will use for Spanish 2.

I am adding to this program some geography of Spanish speaking countries, going out for various foods, and other cultural lessons as we go. Those are areas I have found a lot of book based programs lack.

Random Facts

My mom taught high school Spanish when I was in high school. It is a very long story, and she did her very best, but it has left me with a belief that public school is also not standardized in what they teach for Spanish 1, 2 and 3. While some schools might have had high standards, some of them do not. My mother hadn’t spoken Spanish in 20 years when she was randomly pulled out of her 3rd grade class and asked “you majored in Spanish, right?” And then forced into a classroom of high schoolers.

So, I’m going to call a year of working on Spanish a year of high school Spanish, no matter what topics we cover or don’t. My kid is learning to read, write and speak Spanish. That is the goal. I’m not going to worry about exactly what each level should be.