Spanish

About this course

The language taught here is Spanish, and fourth grade is organized around themes rather than grammar. Eleven units work through greetings and classroom phrases, family and friends, the house and school, meals and food, animals and nature, clothing and weather, days and months and telling time, and places around town including the store, library, hospital, and church. A verb unit gathers the workhorses in one place: ser, estar, tener, ir, querer, poder, hacer, and the regular -ar verbs, with the difference between ser and estar explained plainly. A reading and culture unit covers cognates, short paragraphs, the Spanish-speaking countries, Mexico, Spain, Dia de los Muertos, music and dance, and food traditions. The final unit turns to using what was learned: writing simple sentences, holding a short conversation, describing yourself and your day, and writing a letter to a pen pal.

There are 108 lessons in 11 units, each planned for about 20 minutes, and each unit ends with its own review lesson. You should know that the lessons themselves are short. The teaching text is usually two to four sentences that introduce the day's words with their English meanings, such as la cocina is the kitchen and el refrigerador is the refrigerator. The lesson then follows the same four steps every time: a short prayer, an introduction, practice, and review, and closes with a ten-question quiz that grades itself. The quizzes ask more of your student than the reading does, since several questions each time apply the words to a small situation rather than just translating them. Standing homework is vocabulary flashcards, which your family will need to make.

Two honest limitations. This grade's Spanish is written without accent marks and without the inverted question mark, so words appear as manana, cumpleanos, and como estas rather than in correct written Spanish. Your student will need to pick those up later. And there is no audio anywhere in the course. One lesson encourages listening to Spanish songs and stories, but the course supplies none, so any listening or speaking practice has to come from you and your family or from something you find on your own. Given how brief each lesson is, this grade works best as a steady vocabulary year rather than a full course, and it pairs well with reading the words aloud together. It assumes the earlier grades' basics, and unit 1 reviews greetings and numbers to twenty before anything new starts.

What the course covers

• Greetings, introductions, courtesy phrases, and classroom Spanish
• Family, friends, ages, birthdays, and describing people
• Rooms, furniture, school supplies, subjects, and the classroom
• Meals, fruits, vegetables, drinks, restaurants, and cooking words
• Farm, wild, ocean, and pet animals, plus trees, parks, and the beach
• Clothing, colors in context, weather, and the seasons
• Days, months, dates, telling time, and numbers to 100
• Places in town, transportation, directions, jobs, and community helpers
• The verbs ser, estar, tener, ir, querer, poder, and hacer
• Culture: Mexico, Spain, cognates, holidays, music, and food traditions

What your student will be able to do

• Name several hundred everyday objects, foods, animals, and places in Spanish
• Greet someone, introduce yourself, and give your age
• Use ser, estar, tener, and ir in short present-tense sentences
• Tell time and say the day, month, and date in Spanish
• Ask where something is and give simple directions
• Write a short paragraph or friendly letter describing yourself and your day

Scope and sequence

All 11 units of Spanish for Grade 4, in the order they are taught.

Every lesson, by title

All 108 lesson titles are listed here — nothing is withheld until you download. Open a unit to read its contents.

One whole lesson, exactly as it comes

This is a real lesson taken from the middle of the course — the teaching text, the practice, the homework, and the first three quiz questions with their answers. It is not a marketing excerpt.

What you will need

Drawn from the materials named across all 108 lessons of this course. Most families already own most of it.