This school year, ISW’s Middle School Spanish program is privileged to partake in a new and innovative pilot program created especially for middle school Spanish students. The interactive online story contains 24 episodes which are meant to be used over the course of the entire school year.
COGNOTION, the young, energetic technology company that designed Too Many Tildes,believes that:
- Learning should be fun and engaging
- Story is a powerful way to capture and keep student interest
- Communication is the key to success in school and in future professional endeavors
- Previous difficulty in learning a language should not predict future language success
Students get to know Jack, a young man from a big city in the US, his quest to find the love of his life, and all the people he meets along the way. Students make an emotional connection to a compelling story and, in order to find out what happens next, they have to learn more Spanish. Too Many Tildes features immersion into a simulated natural language environment where students work together to make the story happen. The course increases in complexity and difficulty as students move through the video series, allowing students to ease into the content and build confidence in their language skills through breaking down inhibitions to language learning. The grammar and vocabulary used in the videos correspond to authentic language use, instead of following along an arbitrary progression of grammar topics.
It is our privilege to pilot this program. So far, our students are loving it!
–Christy Landers and Claire McDonald