Digital Elementary Spanish Lessons: FREE PDF for COVID19 School Closures
The global crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is changing faster than news stories can be written and published. The virus has brought almost every major system to challenges perhaps never faced before. Healthcare. Finance. Food service. Transportation.
In the span of a few days, the coronavirus crisis took us from thousands of kids out of school to millions of kids out of school, and not for an extended spring break – for what amounts to mass quarantine. I’m not going to hide it: when I found out they closed the library, I cried. Three weeks of no school for my young children, and we’ve got a forecast of a week of more rain, and you’ve closed the LIBRARY?!
Still, in the face of COVID-19, the community at large is coming together to unite, to support each other, to help and love (without hugs or handshakes, that is). The educational community, too, has stepped up to provide more resources than we could ever have time to explore while kids are stuck inside. The sharing and support going on in the Amazing Educational Resources Facebook group (and have you seen their spreadsheet?) is amazing!
In this challenging time, we too at Calico Spanish want to support learners and their families and teachers. We’ve worked hard to create the most effective, research-based, and downright fun online Spanish curriculum for kids available. Now, we’ve developed ways to make our digital elementary Spanish lessons available for every child affected by school closures due to coronavirus precautions (or a snowstorm, for that matter!). Check out three ways you can use our online curriculum while schools are closed.
1. Digital elementary Spanish lessons: FREE PDF of 10 days of lessons
First, we’ve developed a free PDF with 10 lessons any family can use. These lessons are easy and fun to do, whether the parents or other caregivers speak Spanish or not. Each lesson gives step-by-step instructions and is fully supported by resources from our Stories curriculum, including Video Stories, activity sheets, posters, and flashcards. In these lessons, children will work on:
- identifying the number of objects in a group (1-7)
- saying what day of the week it is and what day of the week a birthday falls on
- asking and answering the question “How old are you?”
- contrasting items that are big and small
Getting the PDF is easy – just click below, enter your email, and you’ll receive an email with the PDF. Upload it to your school learning management system, include it in your newsletter, link it on your website- however you need to get it to your young Spanish learners and their families!
2. Access our full online curriculum.
With any subscription, you’ll get 200+ hours of planned lesson content across 4 levels, so you can move around to whatever content best fits your learners’ ability. All of the lessons were written to be able to be implemented by anyone, regardless of Spanish ability, so they can support literally everyone in this time of shuttered schools.
–>FAQ: What can you do with a teacher subscription?
With every teacher subscription, a teacher is able to:
- stream lessons through Zoom, Meets, etc., as well as
- download and share any of the curriculum PDFs (Activity Sheets, posters, flashcards, and so on) through your private learning management system, like Schoology or Google Classroom.
–>FAQ: What can you NOT do with a teacher subscription?
- share material publicly such as on the school’s public website, or
- download or embed the program videos anywhere.
Are you thinking, “But I have to share the videos!” Read on.
3. Subscribed already? Expand your access to send learning home.
We know those of you already using the Calico Spanish Stories curriculum are all over the map as far as where your learners are concerned. If you want to build your own plans using anything available in your subscription site, we want to support you too.
Usually, the Video Stories that are the core of every Stories unit are locked behind a firewall and only the subscribing teachers can access them. However, to face this unprecedented crisis, we’ve created a new way for schools to provide families with School-to-Home Video Access. You can learn more about this new feature at our Remote Learning page. (This is an optional supplement; additional fees apply.)
We also updated our activities to enable teachers to post them in Google Classroom. Again, details on accessing all of our tools for hybrid, remote, and distance learning can be found on our Virtual Learning page.
Email us if you have questions on how to best meet the needs of your students during this challenging season of teaching Spanish remotely.
One more thing – don’t forget that our videos and games page is always available with no login and no external ads. If you have more ideas for ways we can support you in this time, please let us know. Stay healthy, stay safe, and keep learning.