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Teacher Profile

Grace Cooper

email: grace.cooper@prepclasses.org

I completed 17 years as a home school mom May 2010 when my son, the youngest of two children, graduated from home. Allow me to brag on him a bit: As of March 2023 he is the proud owner of a Chick Fil A Restaurant in Frisco, TX.  My daughter also graduated from home. She was instrumental in designing part of the digital library for UofH, her alma mater.  I met my husband, Talton Cooper, while we were both engineering students at UT.  We married in 1980.  Kingsland Baptist Church has been our church for 20+ years.  In addition to teaching Spanish, I am also a chaplain in the workplace.  Meaning, I get to walk into different workplaces and share the JOY of the LORD. Can you believe such a job exists? 

I have had the distinct honor of teaching with PREP CLASSES since our first year in 1995.  I first taught Spanish to a group of families at Bear Creek Community Church in 1994; These same families formed PREP Classes the very next year.  I guess you could say I was with PREP Classes before there was a PREP Classes. I am second generation American and I grew up in a home where Spanish was and is the main language spoken.  I learned English in first grade right along with learning Reading, 'Riting and 'Rithmetic.  I took Spanish in high school and began to realize how it helped me with English.  I love it when I can teach a student something in Spanish that turns on a light about English grammar.  At UT I was able to test out of my required semesters of foreign language. In my PREP classes, I try to teach Spanish with a missionary emphasis because I know firsthand the difference a bilingual person can make in reaching the lost for Christ. As a child, I learned about Jesus from ladies, who spoke very little Spanish, at the First Baptist Church in my little town.  I will forever be grateful to them. I am very excited to be able to say that a former student who majored in education taught Spanish teacher at a local high school. I have a couple of students who took the Spanish AP exam and passed it.  I also have several former students who decided to minor in Spanish, and many other of my students report gaining college credits through placement tests.  . I love teaching the students the home school community has entrusted to me and hope they develop a lifelong reason for using the language. I want my students to find a real reason for learning this language, because that is what will help them be well on their way to being fluent in the second most spoken language in the United States and fourth most spoken language in the World.

Teacher's Classes

I will be teaching your student using Proficiency Oriented Language Instruction.  As a language teacher my goal is for your student to be more proficient in the target language (Spanish) when they complete my course than when they began. 

A proficient learner can communicate about something appropriately and accurately for a purpose.  This is the goal.  This is my vision for your student.  I want them to be able to communicate about something appropriately and accurately for a purpose. Do I need to say it one more time?  My goal is for the students to be able to communicate about something appropriately and accurately for a purpose.

What will the instruction look like?  It will have these four elements:  

LISTENING: listening to the teacher tell a story, listening to questions asked by the teacher, listening to the teacher describe a film

READING: choral reading with the class, reading stories that have been told/asked in class, embedded reading, reading storyboards

WRITING: filling in missing words in CLOZE passages, free writes, completing personalized sentence frames

SPEAKING: responding to simple questions from the teacher (yes/no, either/or, etc.), re-telling class stories, reacting with rejoinders

Don’t worry, there will be plenty of fun.  Think….puzzles, games, challenges, singing and so much more!

To support each of these 4 elements during the week, I assign homework so that ideally the student is using one or two of the 4 elements daily.  At times what I assign requires using online sites such as:  Señor Wooly, Quizlet, Quizizz and some specific videos on YouTube.

Drop Fees: No withdrawal fee if you withdraw in September.  Withdrawal fee for October and November is $140.  If you withdraw in December or later, the withdrawal fee is the balance of the year’s tuition.

Do not send any fees to Profe Cooper until you receive an email from her.


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I will be teaching your student using Proficiency Oriented Language Instruction (immersion).  As a language teacher my goal is for your student to be more proficient in the target language (Spanish) when they complete my course than when they began. 

A proficient learner can communicate about something appropriately and accurately for a purpose.  This is the goal of the class and is my vision for your student.  I want them to be able to communicate about something appropriately and accurately for a purpose.  Do I need to say it one more time?  My goal is for the students to be able to communicate about something appropriately and accurately for a purpose.

What will the instruction look like?  It will have these four elements:  

LISTENING: listening to the teacher tell a story, listening to questions asked by the teacher, listening to the teacher describe a film

READING: choral reading with the class, reading stories that have been told/asked in class, embedded reading, reading storyboards

WRITING: filling in missing words in CLOZE passages, free writes, completing personalized sentence frames

SPEAKING: responding to simple questions from the teacher (yes/no, either/or, etc.), re-telling class stories, reacting with rejoinders

In the Middle School Class, I will concentrate on what is called the Super 7 Verbs in Present and Past tense.  It is a concept of teaching and recycling the highest frequency verbs in Spanish (actually in all languages):

    1    estar (is at a place / is feeling)

    2    hay (there is / there are)

    3    tener (has)

    4    ser (is)

    5    gustar (likes / is pleasing to) 

    6    ir (goes / is going)

    7    querer (wants) 

Don’t worry, there will be plenty of fun.  Think…. puzzles, games, challenges, singing and so much more!

To support learning Spanish during the week, I assign homework so that ideally the student is using one or two elements daily, always with Super 7 in mind.  At times what I assign requires using online sites such as: Señor Wooly, Quizlet, Quizizz and some specific videos on YouTube.  Is there memory work?  YES, but the lists are short.

Drop Fees: No withdrawal fee if you withdraw in September.  Withdrawal fee for October and November is $140.  If you withdraw in December or later, the withdrawal fee is the balance of the year’s tuition.

Do not send any fees to Profe Cooper until you receive an email from her.


Read more

I will teach your student using Proficiency Oriented Language Instruction (immersion).  As a language teacher, my goal is for your student to be more proficient in the target language (Spanish) when they complete my course than when they began. 

A proficient learner can communicate about something appropriately and accurately for a purpose.  This is the goal of the class and my vision for your student.  I want them to be able to communicate about something appropriately and accurately for a purpose.  Do I need to say it one more time?  My goal is for the students to be able to communicate about something appropriately and accurately for a purpose.

What will the instruction look like?  It will have these four elements:

LISTENING: listening to the teacher tell a story, listening to questions asked by the teacher, listening to the teacher describe a film

READING: choral reading with the class, reading stories that have been told/asked in class, embedded reading, reading storyboards

WRITING: filling in missing words in CLOZE passages, free writes, completing personalized sentence frames

SPEAKING: responding to simple questions from the teacher (yes/no, either/or, etc.), re-telling class stories, reacting with rejoinders

In the Spanish 1 Class, I will concentrate on the Super 7 Verbs and then expand that list to the Sweet 16 Verbs. First semester will concentrate strongly on this list of verbs:

  1. estar(is at a place / is feeling)
  2. hay(there is / there are)
  3. tener(has)
  4. ser(is)
  5. gustar(likes / is pleasing to)
  6. ir (goes / is going)
  7. querer (wants)
  8. salir (to leave)
  9. hacer (to do/to make)
  10. poner (to put)
  11. poder (to be able)
  12. dar (to give)
  13. decir (to say)
  14. saber (to know)
  15. venir (to come)
  16. ver (to see)

Don’t worry, even in Spanish 1 there will be plenty of fun.  Think…. puzzles, games, challenges, singing and so much more!

I will be using a Curriculum called SOMOS as the backbone of my course.  By the second semester, the students will read a novel as part of the course (this could possibly happen in first semester).  Students enrolled for the full year will be using the language with only some explicit grammar instructions.  I know that sounds foreign (pun intended) but as I mentioned at the beginning, I want to teach this class as immersion rather than the traditional vocabulary and grammar based course.   Is there memory work?  YES, but the lists are short.  Some of the grammar concepts the students will use are: present tense, past tense (preterite and imperfect), present progressive, reflexive verbs, articles (definite and indefinite), adjectives, direct and indirect object pronouns, telling time and at what time.  While the students will be exposed those grammar concepts they will work with the rules for present tense AR, ER and IR verbs, Stem changers, noun adjective agreement to name a few.

To support learning Spanish during the week, I assign homework so that ideally the student is using Spanish daily.  Some assignments will require using online sites such as: Señor Wooly, FlipGrid, EdPuzzle, Quizlet, Quizizz and some specific videos on YouTube.

Drop Fees: No withdrawal fee if you withdraw in September.  Withdrawal fee for October and November is $180.  If you withdraw in December or later, the withdrawal fee is the balance of the year’s tuition.  Do not send any fees to Profe Cooper until you receive an email from her.


Read more