Spanish is taught every day for 20 minutes. The lessons are almost exclusively in Spanish. Language is taught through the use of games, songs, story telling and hand on activities. The children are provided with many visuals and given repeated opportunities to acquire the language. The classes are fun and high energy. We spiral the language every year so that the children remember vocabulary learned in previous grades. Reasonable expectations for the students by 5th grade is that they can read simple books, have native sounding pronunciation, have a strong vocabulary base and recognize natural sounding speech.

The children rotate every week between the kitchen lab, the computer lab and remaining in their classroom when the teacher comes to them. In the kitchen they work in centers and try new cultural foods, in the computer lab they are exposed to technology to help them acquire vocabulary. In the classroom they are presented with new concepts.

Students are given a participation and a behavior grade. These grades do not reflect the child's knowledge of Spanish. Each child develops language at their own pace, just like when learning to speak English. We expect all children to behave appropriately in the classroom.