AP THEME: Personal and Public Identities
CONTEXT: Alienation and Assimilation
Martina Bex and Elizabeth Dentlinger get the credit for the idea behind the Smash Doodle. A Smash Doodle is a series of illustrations and words related to a theme. We love Smash Doodles because students are able to be creative, but they also have to synthesize and apply information from the unit into one cohesive thought/presentation. Our students have created Smash Doodles after reading and viewing activities relating to the theme (i.e. read an article/book and watch a movie/documentary) as a way for them to integrate their learning from a variety of sources. We are sharing an example from a unit on Alienation and Assimilation during which students read a segment of "Cajas de Cartón" by Francisco Jiménez and viewed the documentary, Living on One Dollar​. ​

AP THEME: Science and Technology
CONTEXT: Effects of Technology on Self and Society
This resource is designed for the thematic unit of Technology in an upper level course. We utilized the amazing website, Audio-lingua.eu to find native-speakers talking about their opinions on personal technology. What a great way to get students listening to various native-speakers in one assessment! When using this activity, which could be used formatively or summatively, we recommend giving students the opportunity to listen to the audio source three times with time to respond in between. The link to the website can be found at the top of the assessment and is also linked to each speakers' name. ​

AP THEME: Beauty and Aesthetics
CONTEXT: Visual and Performing Arts
During a unit on Entertainment and Media in Level 2, I was striving to make vocabulary assessment more meaningful (I didn't want to just give them a rote memorization quiz). I thought about how they would use the vocabulary, adjectives to describe movies, in real life, and decided the most authentic use of this set of vocabulary would be done when looking at movies and which movies you would like to see/not see after reading about the movie. I developed an Interpretive Reading activity for students using movie synopses. The vocabulary is given to them, but they have to use a variety of the vocabulary correctly in context to talk about their thoughts on the movies. After students completed the activity we watched the trailers to each of the movies - we did this after and not before because I wanted students to base their vocabulary use on what they were reading, not viewing.