Beginner Spanish

The Heart of Sube’s Language System

As SSL instructors, you face one of the toughest challenges in the educational world: immersing elementary students into the sights, sounds, and textures of an entirely new language.

All in just 30 minutes a day or 1-3 hours a week.

We’re here to help.

Bursting with practical insights, teaching tips, preparation lists, how-to instructions, alignment guides, scaffolding charts, reproducible assessments, and so much more, the Lesson Manual is built for the real-world.

With 20 years of research, insight, and hands-on experience combined in one practical book, it works... guaranteed.

What Makes Sube Different

Over 250 Multisensory Activities

Multisensory Immersion

Instead of “tacking” art, music, and games onto our curriculum, the entire Sube Language System is built on multisensory immersion.

To start, the Beginner Curriculum Kit comes with 6 fully developed game sets, each with a wide variety of “Versions” specific to the Manual’s 8 thematic Units and 32 individual Lesson Plans:

• Flashcards
• ¡Ay Caramba!
• Péscalo
• Memoria
• Alpha Word Game
• Alphabet Culebra Puzzle

The Manual also integrates the Interactive Sing-Alongs (DVD & CD) into each lesson so that the vocabulary and content line up perfectly.

Spiraled Content for Every Proficiency Level

On top of that, you get literally hundreds of additional supplemental activities arranged as Core, Ongoing, and Enhancement.

Core Activities are basic activities—like the game sets—you use again and again across Sube’s 8 Units. They incorporate spiraled curriculum that progressively develops higher-level language skills for differentiated learning.

Ongoing Activities cover primary topics that require “ongoing” review, subjects like Colors, Numbers, Calendar, Grammar (the “Silly Sentence Game”), Personal Reflection (“Diario de Palabras”), and more.

Enhancement Activities are variations of existing exercises that provide in-depth study, personalized learning, and opportunities to involve parents and the community. 

By “spiraling” every activity based on proficiency levels and offering you multiple “Versions” of each, you can easily advance your students not only across grade levels, but even within the same class.

Diversity and Variety: Every Lesson, Every Student

Diversity and variety are the keys to student engagement.

By providing activities that directly address ALL the major modes and styles, customizing your lessons to meet the needs of your individual students is easy and effective.

Our How It Works page breaks down exactly how the various modalities are addressed, all within a single unit.

Add to that... detailed instructions, helpful hints for getting started, material lists, and guides for varying the size and scope of your games and you’re ready to bring a whole lot of fun to every, single lesson you teach.

 

 

Organized, Systematic & Easy to Use

Welcome Guide

Our 10-page “Welcome to Sube Spanish” guides you step-by-step through the entire preparation process. Helpful tools like “Getting Started” (p. v), “How to Organize Your Lessons” (p. vi), and the “Curriculum Overview” (p. viii) let you hit the ground running, whatever your starting point.

8 Units, 32 Lessons & 288 Hours of Class

The Manual is organized around 8 thematic units, each with 4 customizable lesson plans per unit, making 32 adaptable lesson plans in all.

Combined with over 250 activities and assessments, each lesson plan multiplies into 1-3 hours of class time per week and can easily be adapted for 30 to 45 minute modules. That’s 96 hours of content in a single year and 288 hours over three. All of it ready to go!

Scope and Sequence

Scope and Sequence is now available for every unit. Get a once over of each unit’s learning objectives in the “Aim” section as well as a list of all activities: Core, Ongoing, and Enhancements. This helps you integrate your language unit into other core curriculum and customize your teaching to meet specific learning objectives.

Curriculum Map

The Curriculum Map organizes Sube activities into a convenient chart by related theme and skill base (literacy, math, communication, etc.).

Each activity is labeled with an icon that estimates time duration. Now you can customize your lessons and identify learning gaps quickly and easily.

Curriculum Planner 

The Sube Curriculum Planner is a visual chart listing all activities included in the Sube curriculum according to unit. Each unit provides activities for weekly or daily lessons and each activity has been designed to focus on specific skills needed to develop speaking, reading, writing and comprehension as well as critical thinking.

All Your Words in One Place

All the key vocabulary from the interactive games and projects played throughout the year have been compiled into one convenient list. Now you can create a word wall, develop writing advanced activities, or send groups of words home with the kids for home study.

 

 

Interactive Multimedia

Each of Sube’s Kits includes 8 original sing-alongs in both audio (CD) and video (DVD) format that line up perfectly with the Lesson Manual’s 8 thematic units.

You’ll experience the authentic Latin sounds of Salsa, Merengue, Cumbia, and Ranchera as well as Golpe Tuyero from Venezuela, Murga from Uruguay, music from the Andes, and more.

Worried about students “just watching”? Don’t be.

Each song includes a rich variety of call-and-response activities that incorporate vocabulary and phrases directly from the curriculum. A powerful tool to reinforce the content through visual, kinesthetic and auditory modalities, your students won’t just learn and interact, they’ll get up and move.

In addition to the lyrics, this multimedia package includes a series of musical background sheets inside the Lesson Manual for delving deeper into each region’s history, geography, culture, and customs. This is a great way to add more activities for older students ready to face more challenging content.

 

STEM & 21st Century Skills

The explosion of digital communication has placed a premium on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and what educational experts call “21st Century Skills.”

Developing these strategic communication and interpersonal skills in preparation for an increasingly technological and multicultural landscape is a must.

Nowhere is this more necessary than in the world of language.

Tools like the Curriculum Map layout exactly what Skill Sets every activity develops: Communication, Literacy, Writing, Language Structure, Creative Arts, Mathematics, and Community Involvement.

This makes targeting specific skills easy, especially when you’re facing limited class or prep. time.

Moreover, Sube’s extensive use of collaborative play, one-on-one conversations, and both multiculturalism as well as self-reflection all directly address the Partnership for 21st Century (P21) 5 Cs: Communication, Cultures, Comparison, Connections, and Community.

 

 

 

Real-World Evaluations

Sube’s “Accountability Pack”—our extensive bank of tests and evaluation tools—is built on two forms of assessment: performance based and traditional.

Performance-Based for Instant Feedback

Focused on meaningful knowledge and communication skills, performance-based assessments enable you to evaluate your student’s learning process itself and not just the final outcomes.

Sube activities are hands-on and interactive so you can see where your students are and can quickly adapt to their needs. In addition, spiraled content allows students at different stages of proficiency to play variations of the same game and progress at their own pace.

Benchmark Evaluation Chart

Teachers can use the four-page Benchmark Evaluation Chart on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis to track each student’s progress. The Chart is broken down into five categories: (1) Communication, (2) Critical Thinking, (3) Geometry and Spatial Sense, (4) Print Awareness/Early Writing, and (5) Creative Arts.

This ongoing and global approach to evaluation under-girds traditional development, and not only makes diagnosing, addressing, and tracking easier it also readies students for language in the real world.

Traditional Assessments & Unit Tests

Of course, our Kits also include traditional assessment tools like individualized assignments and unit tests that naturally spiral from grade to grade so that transitions between classrooms and skill levels are consistent and progressive.

Unit tests were designed to help you assess student progress. They can be administered before each unit (to demonstrate prior knowledge) or after (to demonstrate growth). Student-directed tests and a teacher-directed tests are included for every unit.

 

Comprehensive Standards Alignment

As our 20 years of experience has proven, Sube easily aligns with all state and national standards.

Because alignment is such an important area, we’ve made the full version of our detailed Standards Alignment Guides available online:

We also have a forthcoming ACTFL Alignment Guide for our newly updated Intermediate Spanish Kits.

Need more info? Click here to see what's inside the Sube Beginner's Kit >