Scheduling Spanish 1 Lifepacs

[Serenade]

I sat down last night to schedule the Spanish 1 Lifepacs for the coming year, and I am wondering how in the heck to get through all of that material in one school year.   I would think that with 10 Lifepacs, students would spend approximately one month per Lifepac, but some of those Lifepacs have an awful lot of material to cover in 20 - 22 school days.  Especially if the student is to have long-term retention.

 

I'm wondering if anyone has a ready-made schedule for this course, as Alpha Omega doesn't seem to have one.   I'm also wondering if this course covers more than the typical Spanish 1 class.   I took Spanish 1 - 4 in high school, and I know we used the same book for all 4 years, and I learned enough Spanish to place out of a few semesters at the university.   The pace of the Lifepac seems to be way quicker than the pace I took to learn Spanish.

 

I'd appreciate any opinions and a schedule if you have one!

[Vida Winter]

My 7th grader is going to use AO Spanish 1 this year. Partly because it is 7th grade I am not stressing if we do not finish all the lifepacs this year. However, there is a place in the TM on pp 9-10 that lay out the most successful way to study a lifepac -- too long to type out here but take a look at it. I am going by their study recommendations at least at first to see how it goes. They recommend 45 min/day study time which is a little much for 7th grade. We will probably shorten this to 20 min + a few minutes of online flashcard review. I bit the bullet and installed Anki for flashcards and got the first lifepac vocab words loaded.

 

A wise person suggested that consistent short periods of work Mon-Fri is the key to remembering and progressing in a foreign language so this may be one course where I set a timer and when it rings we're done for the day. My schedule will look like this on Mon-Fri : [ ] Spanish 20 mins [ ] review Anki flashcards

 

Last year dd took an advanced Spanish course with Athena's Academy and the pace was too fast. I'm looking forward to this year going more slowly and gradually.

 

Edited August 21, 2016 by Vida Winter

[Serenade]

My 7th grader is going to use AO Spanish 1 this year. Partly because it is 7th grade I am not stressing if we do not finish all the lifepacs this year. However, there is a place in the TM on pp 9-10 that lay out the most successful way to study a lifepac -- too long to type out here but take a look at it. I am going by their study recommendations at least at first to see how it goes. They recommend 45 min/day study time which is a little much for 7th grade. We will probably shorten this to 20 min + a few minutes of online flashcard review. I bit the bullet and installed Anki for flashcards and got the first lifepac vocab words loaded.

  Thanks for the page reference -- I will check it out.  I do have the teacher guide and skimmed through it, but I must have missed that.

 

 

A wise person suggested that consistent short periods of work Mon-Fri is the key to remembering and progressing in a foreign language so this may be one course where I set a timer and when it rings we're done for the day. My schedule will look like this on Mon-Fri : [ ] Spanish 20 mins [ ] review Anki flashcards

 

Last year dd took an advanced Spanish course with Athena's Academy and the pace was too fast. I'm looking forward to this year going more slowly and gradually.

I think the Lifepac is good, but it seems to cram a lot of information in a short time.   My son is just finishing up the seoond book, and those first two took way too long.  It's just a lot of information to cram in a short time period. I don't think it would have been that hard for me in high school, but my son has a hard time digesting so much new information at a rapid pace.  I hope we can make it through both Spanish 1 and 2 before he graduates.  I drill with him a lot, and I think once he retains it he's got it for good, but it really takes him a long time.

[Vida Winter]

I think the Lifepac is good, but it seems to cram a lot of information in a short time.   My son is just finishing up the seoond book, and those first two took way too long.  It's just a lot of information to cram in a short time period. I don't think it would have been that hard for me in high school, but my son has a hard time digesting so much new information at a rapid pace.  I hope we can make it through both Spanish 1 and 2 before he graduates.  I drill with him a lot, and I think once he retains it he's got it for good, but it really takes him a long time.

 

 

You can push the pacing so much. The reason we were stressed with my 6th grader last year was that we were covering way too much per week (it was a gifted program). It turned out pretty well but we had to spend a *lot* of time on it, at the expense of some other things she should have been concentrating on. I'm planning on moving along steadily but if it gets to be too much we will slow down. I'd rather even do some over the summer than stress out all year. I only know *some* Spanish so this should be interesting.

 

Go ahead and keep this thread alive if you want to share experiences with AO Spanish. I will post as we get into it - we start Monday. You'll probably be more help to us than the other way around, since you've already started!

 

[Serenade]

You can push the pacing so much. The reason we were stressed with my 6th grader last year was that we were covering way too much per week (it was a gifted program). It turned out pretty well but we had to spend a *lot* of time on it, at the expense of some other things she should have been concentrating on. I'm planning on moving along steadily but if it gets to be too much we will slow down. I'd rather even do some over the summer than stress out all year. I only know *some* Spanish so this should be interesting.

I think you are smart to start at a younger age so that even if you have to slow down, you'll have plenty of time. We are now desperately trying to fit in two years of a quality language course before college. We did start earlier, but not early enough, and progress has been slow.

 

Go ahead and keep this thread alive if you want to share experiences with AO Spanish. I will post as we get into it - we start Monday. You'll probably be more help to us than the other way around, since you've already started!

Sure, sounds like a good idea. My son just took the Lifepac 2 test yesterday, and he'll be starting on the third one today. There are a ton of vocabulary words right at the beginning -- it's almost intimidating. I think I'll have him make flash cards this time around and see if that will help with the memorizing.

[Vida Winter]

Sure, sounds like a good idea. My son just took the Lifepac 2 test yesterday, and he'll be starting on the third one today. There are a ton of vocabulary words right at the beginning -- it's almost intimidating. I think I'll have him make flash cards this time around and see if that will help with the memorizing.

 

I installed Anki to try as a flashcard system. It's not very easy to use at first but the advantage is that it determines which cards to review when based on truthful input from the student (they need to acknowledge whether they got it right or missed it).  We haven't really tried it yet but I put all the lifepac 1 words into it. The other system we have used (very easy, too) is Quizlet. One thing I like about Quizlet is a fun matching game - I think it is called "scatter" in which you drag the word to its definition and it times you -- then you try again to beat your time. It mixes up the words every time so if you have a large set it doesn't give you the same ones each time - only so many are used per game.

 

Or, good old index cards and face-to-face quizzing is always good. Don't rely on him to do it all on his own. The interaction with another person helps with remembering. You might be able to figure out creative ways to memorize certain difficult words by drawing pictures, silly images (the wackier they are the easier it will be to remember).

 

One thing we did last year was practice the back and forth conversations in the book - sometimes switching roles. That helped a lot to get ready for her online lessons with her teacher and classmates.

 

Whatever you do, it's hard work to learn a language. I don't love it but will schedule it and do it, like doing the dishes. Actually it will be better than doing the dishes because you will progress over time.

[Serenade]

I installed Anki to try as a flashcard system. It's not very easy to use at first but the advantage is that it determines which cards to review when based on truthful input from the student (they need to acknowledge whether they got it right or missed it).  We haven't really tried it yet but I put all the lifepac 1 words into it. The other system we have used (very easy, too) is Quizlet. One thing I like about Quizlet is a fun matching game - I think it is called "scatter" in which you drag the word to its definition and it times you -- then you try again to beat your time. It mixes up the words every time so if you have a large set it doesn't give you the same ones each time - only so many are used per game.

 

I have used Quizlet before but never heard of Anki. So far writing out the words manually has been good for my son.

 

Or, good old index cards and face-to-face quizzing is always good. Don't rely on him to do it all on his own. The interaction with another person helps with remembering. You might be able to figure out creative ways to memorize certain difficult words by drawing pictures, silly images (the wackier they are the easier it will be to remember).

 

I practice with him just about every day. He is doing much better with the 3rd Lifepac. Maybe he got over some hump with the second one. It is always hard at the beginning.

 

One thing we did last year was practice the back and forth conversations in the book - sometimes switching roles. That helped a lot to get ready for her online lessons with her teacher and classmates.

 

I'll often practice with my son in the car. It's a good time because he's a captive audience!

 

Whatever you do, it's hard work to learn a language. I don't love it but will schedule it and do it, like doing the dishes. Actually it will be better than doing the dishes because you will progress over time.

 

I agree. And it's harder for some than for others. Learning languages is fairly easy for me, but I know my son has to go through the steps every time he hears something that is in a new sort of arrangement. He'll first mentally translate the words, then figure out what his answer should be, and then finally translate that into the other language. I don't remember struggling with this so much, but maybe I did, too. It was such a long time ago.

 

I remember being in Germany, and talking to a Spanish worker at the company I worked for. Trying to go from German to Spanish was very hard. I did fine for a sentence or two, but then my mind got all garbled up, and sometimes I couldn't get any words out of my mouth at all!

 

One thing I'll add here that I found interesting, but Carrie from Heart of Dakota counts Spanish 1 as Getting Started with Spanish, along with half of the Lifepac Spanish 1 set, done over two years. For Spanish two, she uses half of the Spanish 1 Lifepac and 4 units of the Spanish 2 Lifepac, also done over two years. She feels that the curriculum is fast and advanced, which I agree with. It was good to hear that it was not just me. I took four years of Spanish in high school and double-majored in Spanish in college, and I think the pace of the Lifepacs is very fast, too.

[Vida Winter]

It sounds like the pace is very fast. You can slow it down as much as you want -- Carrie certainly did! We will too. The amount of work when you compare one curriculum to another is extremely variable. Work consistently and do what you can. I would not stress at all about completing all the Lifepacs. I would much rather see 5 or 6 of them done well than 10 of them rushed through.

[Serenade]

It sounds like the pace is very fast. You can slow it down as much as you want -- Carrie certainly did! We will too. The amount of work when you compare one curriculum to another is extremely variable. Work consistently and do what you can. I would not stress at all about completing all the Lifepacs. I would much rather see 5 or 6 of them done well than 10 of them rushed through.

  

Just wondering how you and your student are doing with the program.

 

My student was doing really well for a while, but then things slowed down again.  When there is so much to learn and few exercises, he struggles.  He even said today, "How are we expected  to learn the material for this self test when the material was just introduced a couple of days ago?"  I feel for him.  

 

But yeah, we just slow down as needed.  We are getting ready to go out of town for a couple of weeks, and long road trips are great times for memorizing vocabulary words.  :-)

[1pageatatime]

For another perspective....I used to be on the AO Yahoo Group .....I remember reading that a college professor mom on there said, that in her opinion, AO's Lifepac Spanish 1 is equivalent to two years of high school Spanish. It was too hard for our daughter and we dropped it after the third Lifepac.

 

 

 

[HollyDay]

We did it over 2 years.  So, Spanish 1 over 9th and 10th.  And Spanish 2 over 10th and 11th for older dd.  Youngest did Spanish 1 over 7th and 8th (so she could do it with her sister) and Spanish 2 over 9th and 10th.  Youngest supplemented with Fluenz.