McDougal Littell Dime: Student Edition Level 1 1997

I used this as a teacher for many years. Our district got a new adoption thyat is not as well organized, nor are the videos as interesting. I still use the original videos in my class now that I have digitized them!

I used the Dime series for about five years in a high school setting until moving to a different state. My experience with the program was extremely positive! After a few weeks, my students were writing paragraphs, and by the end of the school year they were able to understand and participate in a majority of conversations, even if they didn't understand or know every word they wanted. (They could at least describe what they wanted to say.) If a gramatical concept needed better explanation, it was usually sufficient to refer to the "G" pages in the back of the book, where there were also more grammatical exercises for practice. I have routinely used this section. Although grammar wasn't explicitly taught in the chapters (the book and teacher are intended to get the student to figure out the pattern themselves first before an explanation or referring to the "G" pages), I need to point out that the testing was largely of grammar- in addition to listening and writing sections being tested each time. (Writing is graded with a rubric, which the program provides, and which I distributed a copy of to each student.) While I see that some people might view the accompanying videos as largely "corny," my students had a sense of humor about them and we laughed a lot about the situations. I did, personally, tend to ignore the cartoons in the book, which were a basic copy of the videos. I have used a few other series of books which paled in comparisson to Dime. They tended to be "drill and kill" which bores everyone to death, or they didn't expect the same level of skills that Dime does - for example, the past tense might not have even been covered during the first year. After using the other series my students could produce very little in either speaking, writing, or understand much during reading or listening. I found that practicing listening & reading comprehension in more "realistic" ways, as with Dime, helped with understanding other areas, such as Shakespeare! The idea is to use context clues for comprehension, rather than expecting students to read or listen to something very watered down which really only includes the vocabulary or grammar that they've been exposed to. My high school was on a traditional 6-period schedule. Instead of trying to cover the entire book in one year, we covered the first 4 chapters during first semester, and the next 4 during second semester. That is sufficient for continuing on to Dime Dos, which does have a review of those eight chapters before heading on to new material. It would be more of a challenge to cover those 8 chapters competently on a block schedule.

Man this book changed my life. Beto Chavez, Ana Montoya, Jaime, and the rest of the gang make this the best book I've ever read. Beto's many adventures and hijinks make for great reading. The part when Ramone says, "Hay un cuaderno," was the single most influential life lesson I learned in my high school career. I only wish that Beto and Jaime could have figured out their differences. I highly recommend this book and will cherish it myself forever. JAJAJA