The Somos Curriculum | NOVICE
Somos 1 is a Proficiency-oriented, Comprehension-based curriculum for Novice learners of Spanish
$400.00 $542.00
The Somos Curriculum
Where language and culture collide.
The Somos Curriculum® is a comprehensive, Proficiency-oriented curriculum for Novice and Intermediate learners of Spanish. It is used in over 100,000 classrooms and districts worldwide.
Why Somos?
The Spanish language is inextricably linked to its speakers and their cultures. Using comprehension-based methods of language teaching and an orientation toward proficiency, The Somos Curriculum teaches language and culture simultaneously, allowing Spanish students the opportunity to develop cultural understanding at a depth rarely achieved in beginning language courses.
The Somos Curriculum is acquisition focused
From day one, The Somos Curriculum provides suggestions and example scripts to help teachers use the target language in class. The language is carefully scaffolded to support student comprehension and processing, which paves the way for language acquisition.
The Somos Curriculum is a complete curriculum
With detailed, daily lesson plans and step-by-step instructions, The Somos Curriculum is a pathway to learning about teaching for acquisition. Teachers will find everything that they need to lead class with a communicative approach and in alignment with ACTFL’s World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages.
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The Somos Curriculum | INTERMEDIATE
Somos 2 is a Proficiency-oriented, Comprehension-based curriculum for emerging Intermediate learners of Spanish
$200.00$212.00
The Somos 1 FLEX Curriculum
Digital Hybrid Curriculum for Novice Spanish Courses$350.00$430.00
Nous sommes Novice French Curriculum
The Nous sommes Curriculum for Novice learners
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Proficiency-oriented Curriculum
Proficient language learners can talk about topics, for purposes, with accuracy; The Somos Curriculum is designed to achieve this result. In every lesson of The Somos Curriculum, learners engage in real-life communication on many different topics that help students to develop linguistic proficiency and interculturality.
Culture-Rich Curriculum
Language connects. By focusing instruction on high frequency words, learners are able to explore both simple and complex cultural products, practices, and perspectives — even in the Novice curriculum. In The Somos Curriculum, culture is not an afterthought. It’s an integral part of every unit.
Example topics:
- Cumbia and the cultural diversity of Latin America
- Legends and storytellingBullfighting in Spain: culture or torture?
- Foods and flavors in Latin American cuisine
- The International rights of children
- How climate impacts life in the Caribbean
- Activism as an agent of change
- Festivals and regionalism
- Migration and immigration
Authentic resources
Authentic resources create a context for the language, motivate the learner, and offer students an insider’s view to the target culture. In each unit of The Somos Curriculum, students engage meaningfully with authentic resources, which reinforces the direct relationship between the language classroom and the outside world. The authentic resources used in The Somos Curriculum are aligned with the task models from the AP Language and Culture Exam, including promotional materials, literary texts, articles, charts, letters, audio reports, conversations, interviews, instructions, and presentations.
Natural Acquisition
Different from a traditional curriculum, The Somos Curriculum does not have a specific grammar focus for each unit. The daily lesson plans provide suggestions for using contextualized grammar instruction such as Pop-up Grammar and Grammar in Context to help students understand the meaning of the grammatical forms that they observe in the language. All performance assessments are focused on understanding and being understood, not on mastery of specific grammar concepts.
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Browse our curricula for Spanish, French, and Latin.
Martina Bex
Founder & CEO
Martina Bex originally developed The Somos Curriculum while teaching her middle-school Spanish students in Anchorage, Alaska. Since its initial publication in 2012, Martina has partnered with many authors and specialists from a variety of cultural backgrounds and areas of expertise to bring Somos teachers the best languages curricula on the market.
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