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Have you ever realized weeks into using a curriculum that you need to make changes? Me too.
This week, I’m sharing one of my biggest homeschool fails and what I’m doing to fix it. Spoiler: it involves my high schooler’s Spanish class and a vocabulary mishap that took four weeks to uncover. I’ll also show you a tool I’m planning to use that has worked for us in the past. But before diving in, let’s talk a little about our homeschool journey—especially our experience with Spanish language learning.
Our High School Spanish Journey So Far
This is our second year attempting to learn Spanish in high school. While we’ve dabbled in Spanish over the years as a family, last year was the first time we attempted a full high school credit in the language. Unfortunately, the curriculum I chose didn’t work for my son. Curriculum from that company had worked well for my son for other subjects, but Spanish was a struggle. After months of limping along, we ended up scrapping the plan and using alternative resources to fill the gaps, which resulted in about half a credit for Spanish.
This year, we decided to use Spanish Geniuses. I chose to start with Level 1, even though my son had some background in Spanish, to ensure a solid foundation. In retrospect, I’m so glad we started from the beginning.
What is Spanish Geniuses & How Does It Work?
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To set the stage for the problem I encountered, it’s important to understand how Spanish Geniuses works. The curriculum is video-based, with a lesson video at the start of each week. The teacher conducts a class where she explains the material, and the students follow along and take notes. This is the “in-class” portion, and the rest of the week (days 2-5) is devoted to homework.
Homework assignments can vary:
– Workbook exercises (from the teacher’s workbook or a textbook called Spanish Now)
– Watching vocabulary videos
– Listening to accompanying audio files
The Problem: A Vocabulary Disaster
Here’s where things went off the rails. My son wasn’t learning the vocabulary. And as anyone who has tried learning a language knows, you can’t learn a language if you don’t know the words! <eye roll> It turns out that Spanish Geniuses assigns new vocabulary every week. The teacher suggests several ways to learn the vocabulary, such as creating a personal Spanish dictionary or using flashcards. However, none of that was happening in our homeschool.
So, how did I miss this?
Three Big Mistakes That Caused the Problem
Mistakes were made, and they were all mine. Here’s what I did wrong and what I learned from each slip-up:
1. Not Understanding the Curriculum
I thought I understood how Spanish Geniuses worked, but I didn’t. The reason? I purchased a lesson plan for the entire year from Homeschool Planet’s lesson plan marketplace. While that saved me a lot of planning time, it also meant I never had to dive deep into the curriculum to understand its nuances.
Lesson planning is how I get to know a curriculum. I didn’t get that experience here because the ready-made plan was handed to me. In hindsight, I realize that taking the time to manually plan out lessons helps me understand the flow and expectations of the curriculum.
2. Not Using the Curriculum As Intended
I’m no newbie to homeschooling, and I know it’s common to tweak a curriculum to fit our needs. However, before tweaking, it’s critical to understand how the creators intended the program to be used. I skipped this step and made changes right out of the gate, particularly around vocabulary practice.
I told my son to skip the flashcard activities and personal Spanish dictionary because I knew those methods wouldn’t suit him. Instead, we used Quizlet, a flashcard app we’ve had success with in the past. However, since I didn’t fully understand how vocabulary was being taught in the curriculum, I ended up making changes that set my son up for failure.
3. Not Watching the Videos
If I had just watched the first few weeks of videos, I would have caught these issues much sooner. Watching the videos would have made the curriculum’s vocabulary practices crystal clear and saved us a lot of headache. I’m familiar with using video-based curriculum (e.g., Math-U-See and IEW’s writing curriculum), and I’ve watched many of those videos to ensure I understand the content before making any changes. I didn’t do that this time, and it cost us.
The Fix: Going Back to Basics
When I realized that my son wasn’t learning the vocabulary, I knew we needed to take action. First, I went back and watched all the weekly vocabulary videos for the first month to understand what words he was supposed to learn and how the teacher suggested learning them. It turns out that I didn’t grasp the importance of these vocabulary practices from the lesson plan alone.
Since I prefer using Quizlet for vocabulary learning, I created flashcard sets for each week of the curriculum. Going forward, my plan is to have my son create these sets as part of his weekly homework—a tweak that fits his learning style but stays true to the curriculum’s structure.
To ensure my son catches up, we are pausing the Spanish Geniuses curriculum for a couple of weeks to focus solely on learning the vocabulary from the first four weeks. I anticipate it taking about 2-3 weeks, but I’m willing to take longer if needed.
Conclusion
Homeschooling is a journey full of adjustments, and sometimes those adjustments don’t come as quickly as we’d like. In our case, it took four weeks to uncover a planning problem with our Spanish curriculum, but the beauty of homeschooling is that we can adapt and pivot when things aren’t working.
Reflecting on this experience has taught me how crucial it is to truly understand the curriculum before making changes, to follow the intended structure first, and to be open to going back and learning alongside our kids when necessary. While it’s easy to feel frustrated when mistakes happen, they often lead to better solutions and stronger learning experiences.
Going forward, we’ll be making sure to use Quizlet the right way, taking the time to fully absorb each week’s vocabulary before advancing, and keeping our curriculum tweaks intentional and informed.
I hope that sharing my experience helps you in your homeschooling journey as well—whether you’re facing similar challenges or just looking for reassurance that it’s okay to course-correct. After all, we’re all learning as we go, and that’s what makes the journey worthwhile.
