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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.

Illustration Somos

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.

I have never been so in love with a Spanish curriculum. Every activity is designed well and is comprehensible to students. I love being able to use the plans without needing to create my own materials but having the flexibility to do so if I want to. Worth every penny!

Christine T.

This curriculum is so engaging. My students love that they are using the language instead of just memorizing vocabulary and completing conjugation charts. They also enjoy all the cultural elements. Thank you!

Sara R.

Somos has been a game changer in my classroom. My students are engaged every day and they love the lessons, activities, and games. The curriculum begins to build their confidence from Day 1. Everything is complete and ready for the teacher! 

The Spanish Saylor

SOMOS is great for SPAN1 and also great in learning to navigate and use CI. My students do so well and it has really brought me into the joy of teaching language through connection and I find that my students get it and enjoy it!

Spanish Teacher via Facebook

The Somos Curriculum has literally been a lifesaver for me this school year! It is so fun and so thorough! The curriculum uses songs, stories, and really fun things to help students learn how to communicate in Spanish! My students are able to communicate instead of just memorizing vocabulary! 

Emma H.

This curriculum was worth every penny! The resources provided are top quality and the plans themselves are very well thought out and developed. My students love the movie talks, all the musical activities, and even the notes and daily warm ups are entertaining. If you're on the fence about getting this, do it!

Dennis J.

My students loved the material. Each unit had a memorable story and/or a song that students would remember for weeks! Also, the small amount of target vocabulary used is not threatening to students, specifically to those with special needs. This curriculum also gave me the tools I needed to write lesson plans super fast and easily. 

Camila del Castillo

I love using Somos in my classroom! It makes my job so much easier with already made plans, slides, and student work. It is also so easy to modify to fit students' needs. We especially enjoy the songs and silly stories.

Adrianna S.

My students were engaged and speaking, reading, writing in Spanish for the first time. They used to hate Spanish, but now they love it. I see growth and fluency going higher. 

Rafael G.
Illustration darkened sitting and reading 99aed8

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.

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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
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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.

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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.

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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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