Unit: Musica y Baile

Music and Dance

We’ve gone through multiple versions of our dance unit.  We tried to make it culturally focused on dances, but found the students’ interest and engagement was divided.  We decided to focus on creating an authentic task for what our students would really do in their lives.  

This is for our 10th graders, a level 3 Spanish class.  We teach in block schedule (80 min) and meet every other day.

They post everything..so why not have them post about their experience?  Do they have a concert experience?  Some do, some don’t…either way we’ll make a unit that gives them tons of these experiences! So we didn’t lose culture…we are focusing on pop culture and we know they love music! We're going to fill their brains with stories and experiences about concerts!  We started many days with Senor Wooly Una Cancion Original but didn't require anything with it...just wanted it to get stuck in their heads!

I am really proud of this unit.  I set up the typical IPA a bit different than normal in the fact that we began with a presentational performance.  However, this is not the beginning of the year, we know our students’ abilities and this is in their performance ability.  We used this text (I’ll admit it’s a slightly modified authentic resource…I’m always aware of our mental and time limits!) as a springboard and I kept asking about it all unit long. 

The PowerPoint for the unit

Task: I can share details about my concert experience.

We share this with the students from the very beginning and remind them on a regular basis when we unpack the daily learning target and how it connects to the big picture.

Overall Plan (* = graded work)

Day 1: Connections to music unit

Day 2: Introduction to Artists * (writing IPA)

Day 3: Justin Bieber story

Day 4: Justin Bieber story * (“vocab” focus)

Day 5: Alvaro Soler La Cintura story

Day 6: Alvaro Soler La Cintura lyrics focus

Day 7: Alvaro Soler Puebla story

Day 8: Alvaro Soler Puebla point of view * (“grammar” focus)

Day 9: Alvaro Soler Puebla Dance

Day 10: Chino y Nacho Niña Bonita Concert

Day 11: Nacho “Concert” * (Reading IPA)

Day 12: Events and emotions  

Day 13: Beyonce “Concert”

Day 14: Story Ask and Write together (to serve as “review”)

Day 15: Evaluation*

Day 16: Celebration

Unit: Involucrado para mejorar la comunidad

This unit is soooo great....it feels so authentic!

I've always loved it. (here's our old version that is solid)..but my colleague and I have made some tweaks that are really powerful to create flow as we guide our students to the final evaluation.


First change:  Rename it (again)!  Involucrados para mejorar la comunidad
I wanted to showcase our goal (create a proposal to our partner college to help communities in need of assistance), so the name makes more sense.  I do one daily translation a day and that's with our daily learning target and sometimes I build the title into that procedure.  I just use my magic pointer finger (which requires English which is normally a no-no) and point to what they translate...and I focus on morphemes a lot.  So for example when we translate para as "in order" I immediately put my pointer on the "ar" in mejorar and pause while they say "to" before moving to the root verb and they say "better".

Second change:  Use an authentic photo for my cover page.
No more cute clip art if I can help it.  I want true representation of the target culture and that's great fodder for communication.  We spoke about it various teams throughout the unit because there's a lot going on.  They also asked questions (!!!) about it.  I will promote and encourage authentic questions ALL THE TIME because they are an absolute essential skill for intermediates.

Third change:  re-evaluate our mini themes to ensure that we are giving examples of ways that communities are being helped so the students have a foundation of ideas (and tons of tons of input based on #authres).

Viva El Toro

Our second unit of the year for 10th grade is a reader and our goal is an interpersonal assessment.  We read Blaine Ray's Viva el Toro (and hopefully we'll get the new edition next year!). This unit has definitely shifted and grown as we've incorporated IPAs to be our structure for a unit.  There are so many fantastic authentic resources that support bullfighting and I'm sure that we'll include more in the future.  We wanted to structure this similar to a Socratic Seminar in which students referenced different resources to link them together.  We set our goal for Intermediate Low and try to model and encourage effective communicative skills throughout the lesson and also focused on asking questions on a regular basis.  We set daily learning targets and try to hold the students accountable each day with closure in regards to that goal. 

Playlist

Spanish 5: Perspectives of Death

I wanted to make this unit to align with the PERSPECTIVES of Day of Dead. For the last few years, it was on family traditions, but we wanted to tweak this to give the students more to talk about in their final interviews.

We also set our goals on creating experiences and going slow.

Overall plan:  Perspectivos de Muerte

1. Vamos a Morir (movie talk and song analysis)
2. Holiday Comparison (show clip from El Libro de Vida)
3. Art: Jose Guadalupe Posada (IPA reading)
4. Cemeteries (stations, including a chat station with teacher)
5. Mariposas
6. Ofrenda (lots of hands on stuff)
7. Perspectives of Death (Octavio Paz quote)
8. Work day 1
9. Work day 2
10. Interview & on-demand writing

I would love to add a day about the parade in Mexico City.  I had no idea about this.  Hollywood actually inspired the new tradition.  Prior to 007, there was no official parade in DF and the parades were in small towns.  I feel like this could be a rich discussion.  

RESOURCES

Choice HW (this was quickly made, so it’ll have to be added to as I collect more #authres)

Youtube playlist

Unit: Poder de Solidaridad

I made some modifications from my unit last year, including the name, but there's a lot of the same.  A huge modification was changing my final assessment...it was lacking

something before.  My own children were working on their (5th grade) book report at home and that's when it hit me.  I have a lot of icons and symbolism in this unit, so I'd conclude with a Mystery Bag interview.  (I created a back up for students who "forgot")

Pinterest board
Youtube playlist
Youtube videos
Choice HW

Unit: Comunidades

I LOVE teaching this unit.  It started out from the textbook as En La Ciudad and as I worked to implement IPAs I focused on transportation and it was ok...not compelling though.  Then at ACTFL 2016 I got the inspiration I needed.  Megan and Kara from The Creative Language Class presented about making a meaningful curriculum and they shared this image and I was in!  If I was hooked, I new I'd get my students wanting to talk about this.

Unit: Tradiciones Familiares

Our level 5 is tied to a textbook, but we have the power to add/subtract/modify to meet our needs.  I'm very thankful for that.  I really don't like using a textbook, but can appreciate the need to find a common way to tie multiple schools together.  I also believe that textbooks were designed for teachers and schools to use the parts that fit their needs, NOT to do every activity in their.  They are speaking to a national audience and populations vary immensely across the nation.
To take advantage of Day of the Dead, I changed the order and decided to squeeze in more culture with unit 4. I shifted the focus to family traditions.

Unit: Sentir y Vivir / Soy Yo

This is a unit for level 5 students who are returning from summer break and I anticipate the majority to have a baseline of developing Intermediate-Mid.  So as we get back on track to get them to a continuous proficient level of Intermediate-Mid this year, we're starting off with a unit to let them talk about themselves and to finish with creating a Frida-inspired self-portrait that they can describe to an audience.

Let me also tell you that Kara Jacobs has a great unit that could be used for this simliar theme connecting to the AP theme Belleza y Estetica.  She's got free stuff to use...I wanted to use her ideas but have other themes to touch upon so time doesn't allow.

Unit: Perspectivos de Inmigracion

I've decided to use this unit for a presentational goal in mind for the students.  In looking at all the authentic resources to use, I'm overwhelmed by the songs that fall into this theme and I know that I can't use them all...though I want to.  So I will bring many of them into my lessons and ultimately, students will be given a song that they need to present to their classmates.  I'm going to go a little old-school here and have my students present in a "job-fair" format (thanks for Megan Sulewski for the idea) and use *gasp* posters to present!  They can still use QR codes to incorporate technology (audio, visual, etc) but I want them to put a bit more love into their projects than I see them produce in powerpoint.  Also, I want this to be an opportunity for Q&A (interpersonal speaking) and when the audience can see everything (where a PPT advances and previous pages can be forgotten), they serve as prompts for conversation pieces.

Unit: Las Riquezas Naturales en Colombia

 

In my level 5 class, we are aiming for Intermediate High as the goal for the course.  Of course, the individual students vary, but I want Intermediate High to be known as I do my research for what authentic resources and what content I choose.

We teach a chapter entitled "Las Riquezas Naturales" and I was looking for a more focused approach as I designed my IPA and after collecting a lot of authentic resources and trying to determine what cultural aspect would be interesting to the students, I decided to focus on the landmine epidemic in Colombia.

Every unit, I aim to use art and music as authentic resources and cultural insight and I felt that I was getting something in this direction through Juanes.  I watched the movie Living on One Dollar with my 9-year daughters one day and knew I had to us
e it in the classroom. The movie shows the reality of true poverty in a country in Central America and is very inspiring to want to help to make a change.  So I was also aware of the nonprofit organization Kiva where people ask for loans.  Some other bloggers have created a project with it also.  Putting this together with a Colombian focus gave me a true vision for the unit.  I knew that I had to get the students to see the beauty in Colombia and the harsh reality that citizens face.  So my backward design and path of study has settled on the following:
(we meet on block schedule.  80 minutes every other day)