About three years ago I finally obeyed the inner voice that was yelling at me that textbooks were terribly unmotivating and out-of-date as soon as they were printed and we closed our textbooks forever and haven’t looked back, in Spanish 1 through 3 anyway (we do use a workbook some in AP to get students used to the format of the AP exam).
(Side note: for a good blog post on throwing out your textbooks by Shelly Blake-Plock a.k.a. @teachpaperless, look here.)
As Shelly mentions, one thing textbooks do for us as teachers is give us structure. We do have to have structure, after all. At my school we just hired a new Spanish 1 & 2 teacher (and by new I mean it’s her first year teaching as well) and for the past several weeks I’ve been working on organizing and updating the Spanish 1 and 2 scope & sequence and word lists for her. One thing I’ve been doing is using Mark Davies’ amazing Corpus del Español to edit verb forms for higher frequency (look here for a good explanation by Michel Baker on how to use the Corpus), as well as checking to be sure we have the most frequent words in the lists.
And as I’m a firm believer in sharing the work we do, here are the documents for Spanish 1.
Word list (sorry all the dates are from 2008)
Scope and sequence (“extended” in the spring is because our spring quarters are technically 10 weeks long)
Feel free to “steal” and use whatever you can. As you read, keep in mind I teach in a private Christian school in a textbookless, translation-less, technology-based, storytelling classroom full of pop music and communicative, performance-based assessments.
Spanish 2 coming soon.
This is a great scope and sequence. I like your ideas, and I would love to borrow more from you if you don't mind. I am in my second year with a Spanish program in my school. They haven't had much continuity with Spanish and I am trying to create a program that will last for a long time. are you planning to post lessons that follow along with your scope and sequence?
thanks!
Jen
Thanks for the comment, Jen. I haven't taught Spanish 1 in a couple of years and haven't had much opportunity to document the lessons but I do have the first 14 days in fairly good detail. Ask and you shall receive. Check the new post (12 Aug 2010).
I would really love to see your Spanish II stuff–this is great! Thank you for sharing!
Rr
So…. my new colleague and I are re-doing both Spanish 1 and Spanish 2 using thematic units and proficiency-based assessments. As soon as I have them ready, I'll post them. 🙂 This summer I did the first 7 units of Spanish 1 and then time ran out on me, lol.
Did you ever redo the scope and sequence for Span 1 and 2? My colleague and I don’t like the Spanish 2 book the school bought and are looking to just do some things on our own. Thanks!
I would like to see your Spanish I and Spanish II lessons as well as your scope and sequence. Good stuff!