MARACAS LLC specializes in providing interactive language learning for pre-school and elementary age children. Our curriculum materials guide teachers through a fun and engaging way to make language come to life in their classrooms. Through music, interactive play, literature and activities, MARACAS exposes children to the sounds and rhythms of Spanish in a meaningful and exciting way. MARACAS is
extremely flexible and can be adjusted to meet the needs of your curriculum. The overarching goal of the MARACAS program is to create a peer friendly, constructivist (one which encourages students to build their own paths of knowledge) learning environment in which a teacher can guide students into learning Spanish in a meaningful way. It is not a program focused solely on words, but instead, MARACAS aims to help students develop a keen understanding of conversational interaction and a level of comfort listening and responding in even the simplest Spanish. Developmentally appropriate practice is the cornerstone of MARACAS. For this reason as well as the strong research in favor of it, MARACAS uses music in every class and I have developed nearly 40 songs with simple repetitive rhythms and structures to aid in comprehension and language growth. Combining the music with each theme and with many well-known children’s songs as well as original music helps to create a classroom environment that welcomes and invites children to take risks and become comfortable in the target language. By augmenting the comprehension with music infused with content, students in MARACAS classrooms will take in and use concepts and phrases more readily. Since its inception in 2002, I have strived to build MARACAS in a way that can grow with my students. Each lesson is carefully crafted to pull from what they know and to challenge them to make connections linguistically and cognitively. As a classroom teacher, I am acutely aware of the diversity of learning styles and abilities. I am also cognizant of the time and space constraints on elementary language teachers. These elements present a constant classroom management challenge and give language teachers a continuous need for easily adaptable, meaningful tools. In creating MARACAS, I have endeavored to face these issues and construct activities that will ultimately make the teaching and the learning fun and memorable. MARACAS was developed by Amanda Seewald, M.Ed., a certified Elementary, ESL, and Spanish teacher whose experience includes living and studying in both Spain and Japan. She speaks Spanish, French, and Japanese. Amanda was named as a 2007 Mead Leadership Fellow. She serves on the boards of the Joint National Committee on Language, the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, and is the President-Elect for the Foreign Language Educators of New Jersey. MARACAS began under a Union County HEART grant in 2002 and has grown since then to encompass both in-school and extracurricular programming. MARACAS is used in classrooms around the country and continues to grow. Using Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences and the assertions of brain compatible teaching and learning research, Amanda developed interactive activities based on simple themes in Spanish and combined them with content area objectives for each grade level. Each lesson is taught using a variety of materials and methods to ensure that all learning styles are addressed. Amanda’s hope is that through early exposure to foreign languages, children will learn more readily and develop a stronger aptitude for language learning as their studies continue. Why include the MARACAS curriculum in your school program? Research by educational leaders as well as advocacy organizations such as NNELL (National Network for Early Language Learning) supports the idea that young children learn languages easily and are more capable of developing fluency if language exposure begins at an early age. Not only does a child’s ability to speak another language improve, but also that child’s mind becomes accustomed to learning in varied ways. This skill can be carried with them through all subjects across the curriculum. The interest spawned in languages and in learning through the fun and interactive lessons from MARACAS will readily transfer to other aspects of that child’s learning everyday. The MARACAS curriculum will meet the learning needs of all kinds of learners and inspire them to continue growing linguistically. By incorporating the MARACAS curriculum into your school's program, you demonstrate that your school is paying attention to your students’ needs now and for the future as they study and grow in our multicultural world.
