"I just viewed a bunch of your video clips! Wonderful educational tools - you have an obvious, excellent ability to communicate using the medium. Really great." - Paul H., New York film maker
"Once they see your video samples, they will be crazy not to subscribe!" - Donna W., Alabama homeschool mom and Spanish teacher
"My third and fourth graders LOVE the lion song. I keep getting requests to do the song again. It has become a reward for them and it's really neat to hear them sing along." - M.E., Wisconsin
"Your lessons are great for a teacher like me who is limited in Spanish. In fact, our principal looked into purchasing your program because of teachers like me. What a great program you have! Thank you again!" - C.M., 2nd-grade teacher, Oregon
"I wasn't sold on this until I started to use it, and now that I see how easy it is to use, I love it! If anybody has reservations about it, tell them to call me!" - Junior High teacher, Illinois
Our 10-minute videos and Fluency Builder software enrich the K-8 years with abundant exposure to language and culture, incorporating themes such as kindness and aggression; musical instruments; food and cooking; career exploration; animal care; weather; wildlife; and much more. We cultivate love for languages and an eagerness for smart friendships and adventures around the world. Your school can start with the first batch of 100+ videos for $600. The Fluency Builder is priced separately at $18 or less per computer per year.
Download the lessons and handouts to your school server. Don't be overwhelmed by the quantity. This is a continuum of hundreds of lessons, just one project our team is involved in. Not all our projects are public.
We add a batch of 100+ ten-minute video lessons each year. Text-based activities increase along the way, though we favor nonwritten performance. Most schools have no time to grade more paperwork. Our students are known for using the language more than traditional students do. The lessons can be viewed by groups or individuals. Start any month you please. No bilingual or extra personnel are required. No certain number of lessons must be covered. Do what your schedule allows, and above all keep the language exposure going. We are currently producing the third batch of 100+ videos and planning Batch 4. This year we will go back and add lessons requested by private, public and diocese schools.
Scope and Sequence and Philosophy. We cover typical content and more in a time frame that varies with each school and district. In areas of communication, grammar and culture, this enrichment allows students to eventually equal or surpass students who spend comparable time in traditional coursework. But our instruction is not meant to replace anyone.
Our subscribers tend not to see language primarily as an academic area. Language learning requires lots of space for ungraded exposure. And standards and content should be adjusted to the school schedule, not just crammed in. Otherwise, mastery is imaginary. Grading can be based on participation during early and intermediate stages. Text-based skills are acquired in the process. We include many linguistic and cultural aspects, such as word origins, multi-part interviews with people who open the world to the students, and captivating contexts to teach language.
The general viewing order is listed in the syllabi found on our More Info page. The farther you go into our sequence, there's more instruction than most schools will have time for in a given year, partly due to some intense academic components that we will be including. Maximize variety by alternating between our components and whatever else you may be using. You can call us early or late at Three One Seven - Seven Three One - Twenty-Six Twenty-Nine. We could be anywhere when you call.
Feature from Batch 3: Mateo y Marcos (for grade 6 and up) This Cultural Insight applies around the world.
School subscription version is in higher resolution for full-screen group viewing.
Click here if your system won't play the embedded video.
Click here to see Making Margaritas, Part 2. From Batch 1. For kids only.
Our assessment tool motivates students toward a climate of using the language together. For grades 4-8, most schools find more paper-based responses than they have time for in the Cultural Insights of Batch 1 and 2 and the language lessons of Batch 2.
The language videos have been building from lower elementary up while offering a lot to older students. But, because we made more lessons than early grades use in a year, by request we started making some language lessons in Batch 2 specifically for grades 4 to 8. These lessons treat standards more extensively. Many lower-elementary lessons are designed so that older students can get more out of them. It's best to start upper elementary with the first two batches, even though you probably won't finish both batches in one year. (Anyone with at least a 4th-grade reading level can also subscribe to the On the Go series. A combination subscription is available in quantity at little cost.)
Our videos add strong international flavor to your curriculum because, while the main focus is on Spanish and the cultures in which Spanish is spoken, many lessons encourage the study of other languages and places. Our cultural content is new to most adults.
Apple users play our videos in Quicktime with the free Flip4Mac plug-in.
A Price and Order form for public and private schools is on our More Info page. We charge per building, not per capita. At this time, the fee for the first batch of lessons for new video subscribers remains at $600 per building, and 17% off for orders placed by May 31. The Fluency Builder software is priced separately and is an important part of this enrichment program.
A subscription loans a school an additional batch of 100+ lessons each year for the same flat setup/tech fee. For instance, 08-09 subscribers who renewed for 09-10 got 200+ lessons with no additional fee for the second batch. If you start in 2010-2011 and you want 200+, you pay double but only for your starting year. For new subscribers, such a scenario might look like this for orders placed by May 31/after May 31, 2010:
Thirty of each batch are Cultural Insights for upper elementary, and we consider them as important as language lessons. In addition, many language lessons and most cultural lessons for lower elementary are useful to beginning older students. Use however many lessons you want, and pick up from there the next year.
Half of our subscribers add our instruction to a program they're already using. The constant claim is that language study strengthens other performance areas.
Fluency Builders 1 and 2 run in WINDOWS. This unusual software uses a variety of interaction for mastering a manageable vocabulary for people to use together. The Fluency Builder serves as a dynamic set of tasks in which students make associations, choices and responses at a supervised pace that cannot be maintained when written answers are required.
The video lessons are more contextualized. The 80 to 90 annual language videos include cultural segments, handouts, frequent performance activities, and periodic paper-and-pencil tasks or quizzes. The 30 annual Cultural Insights for the older students have handouts to use as quizzes, guides or springboards. Half our videos should be repeated at least once. View one or more in a block of time.
Our instruction is intellectually and physically interactive, and schools use it in different ways. An extended day is not necessary. Students can work the lessons completely independently if you prefer. Over time, the lessons encourage learning multiple languages by including interviews and snippets related to French, Japanese, Hindi, Mandarin, German, Portuguese, Greek, signing, Latin and other languages. Cultural content is provided for every grade, and much of it relates to being world-smart in general.
The instruction is based on M T Russell's experience at all levels and on 1500 K-6 live distance-learning sessions he conducted, always with one foot in the Spanish-speaking world, which his family is part of.
