2. Unit Planning*

Included in this component as evidence is a detailed description of week long unit that covers describing people using personality adjectives in Spanish. This unit is taught toward the end of the trimester in Spanish 9.

One way this unit demonstrates expert teaching is through the variety of ways the content is introduced and practiced. We begin with a TPRStory that introduces some of the vocabulary and informally introduces students to the grammatical formatting. (A TPR Story is a story told all in Spanish with translations written on the board. Students participate by responding to questions asked during the story in a choral manner.)Then we take a constructivist approach to guiding students to understand noun/adjective agreements and how they are different in Spanish. We do this through partner puzzle work and all-class sentence races. We also engage students by describing popular people like celebrities, and they enjoy describing these people in written form in Spanish. Finally we end with them writing about themselves, something they always enjoy.

This unit demonstrates advanced skills not only by differentiating how we work with the content (watching, listening, writing, and speaking) and what we discuss (myself vs. others) but we’ve created this unit to allows us to differentiate by ability as well. We structure the unit so all students can feel successful and challenged. To challenge advanced students we teach plurals of nouns and adjectives, have them catch nuanced errors, expand the vocabulary set and teach them how to type accent marks. Success for students with lower-ability may include focus on specific vocabulary and only one, clear, grammar rule.

Every unit we create has clear, manageable steps with opportunities to grow. We also show examples of previous student work to establish clear academic expectations. We make sure that every time we explain a project overview we show them examples of advanced, proficient, and nearly proficient work so they know what the expectations are. By showing examples and walking through the rubric with the students before they begin, we avoid students who shut down because they are overwhelmed.

Finally, it’s important to note that every time we assess a student they are also assessing themselves. They are responsible for articulating areas of strengths and growth, just as much as I am articulating it to them. This again reinforces independent learning through self-reflection and self-direction, and increases student achievement because the students realizes they can always do something else to improve.

Beyond the week the material taught is recycled throughout the class. In the following week we will begin to include describing people in the Daily Oral Practice, and through repetition students eventually wean themselves from their notes. We also assess this content in the final and they use this vocabulary during their native Spanish speaker interview.

This written unit plan demonstrates that we construct our weekly units based on objectives and standards that are measured through projects as assessments,, and shows how we scaffold our lessons and utilize resources and technology to address the skills students already have/lack.