AP THEME: Families & Communities
CONTEXT: Human Geography, Family Structure
​CONNECTIONS: Global Challenges/Contemporary Life

This year we are transitioning to Target Based Learning & Grading at NHS. In order to assess "Interpretive Listening" in AP® after reading the short story Cajas de cartón, I created the following listening assessment based on an interview with the author, Francisco Jimenez. The audio (and video) of the interview can be found on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-eUlXw5fQk 

In the assessment there are two parts;  Part A is the first five minutes (00:00-5:00) and Part B is the second 5 minutes (5:00-10:00). I repeated each part twice for students. While students didn't have to have knowledge of the reading to be successful on this assessment it definitely would have helped them slightly to have that background knowledge. 

El Ministerio del Tiempo is a fantastic telenovela that mixes past and present. I am considering using this show in AP Spanish but need to spend more time developing resources and collaborating with others. Anyone? Anyone? :)

I love this show for a variety of reasons. It provides listeners/viewers with a very distinct pattern and rhythm of Spanish...including the 'vos' form that used to be used in Spain, back in the day. Check out this article that I found very intriguing on that topic.

Thematically and culturally this show is a goldmine for Spanish teachers. The three patrol members go back in time to prevent history from changing...and along the way meet very influential historical figures.  It hits on several AP Themes, especially across the episodes. Personal & Public Identities are addressed often throughout the show as the patrol members learn to cope with their new realities and as they work to preserve the rich Spanish patrimony. Beauty & Aesthetics comes up in many episodes as very famous artists play very significant roles, including Miguel Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Pablo Picasso and reoccurring Velazquez. Science & Technology and Contemporary Life are definitely touched upon as the patrol members go back and forth through time- obviously noting technological advancements in present day. 

I hope to find more teachers willing to collaborate and spend time developing resources for this awesome program. For now, I bring you a synopsis, character profiles, a little bit of vocabulary and some beautiful screenshots and images mostly taken from www.rtve.es/television/ministerio-del-tiempo/. 

Google Slides: El ministerio del tiempo; a conocer los personajes

THEME: Contemporary Life
CONTEXT: Lifestyles
I created this assessment for the end of our first unit using a video that was created by native speakers for learners of Spanish. There are lots of videos by SGEL ELE Español para extranjeros on their Youtube Channel that have a lot of value in the classroom that can be used in different units. 

The narrator, Eva, interviews her family and friends about where they are from, how old they are, where they currently live, what their name is, etc. This video works as preparation for students to do interpersonal interviews with similar questions as well. 

There are 8 total episodes, each ranging in length, that in the end have been combined to create a seamless movie. When it first streamed, it was interactive. After each episode/segment viewers could vote for what happened next in the story with a "what would you do" question being posed to the audience every time. It would have been very cool to be a part of that voting process!

Why does this appeal to me for AP Spanish? For a variety of reasons! First, like I said, the episodes vary in length, 9-20ish minutes if I remember correctly. That makes it so doable to show in class and develop meaningful resources. Second, the title itself and the "what would you do" scenarios offer a lot of repetition of this valuable phrase. Thematically I think this series will fit great in my Personal & Public Identities unit (Personal Beliefs & Values, Personal Interests, Self-Image/Self-Esteem) but it also ties into several other themes: Families & Communities (Educational Communities, Family Structure, Friendship & Love), Contemporary Life (Lifestyles, Personal Relationships), Global Challenges (Philosophical Thought & Religion). Maybe most importantly the episodes are highly engaging and with a little bit of prep work can be very comprehensible to students. Attached are the resources I've created so far for Chapter 1. Let us know if you have used this web-series before!
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Google Slides Link: Picture Talk (No text)
Google Slides Link: Graphic Novel Chapter 1
Pre-viewing Questions for each chapter​
All photos were taken as screenshots from http://www.rtve.es/playz/sifuerastu/.

THEME: Contemporary Life
CONTEXT: Travel & Leisure (Sports)
With the Winter Olympics that took place last year we had a unit on the Olympic Games and Olympic athletes. This was a great lead into our CI/Novel unit on Felipe Alou: Desde los valles a las montañas. It will be interesting to see how this unit is reworked for next year seeing that the Olympics won't be currently taking place. One thing for certain is that one can always talk about past Olympic games!

Attached is an infographic assessment we used in Level 2 this past year about the Olympic Games of Río in 2016. In class students used this infographic to converse in the past tense before truly knowing they were using the past tense. Including grammar in your lessons and assessments can be as simple as pointing it out, highlighting it and making students notice the forms that are repeatedly being used.  

THEME: Contemporary Life
CONTEXT: Lifestyles
Our first non-review unit of Level 2 this year was Daily Life. This passage is taken from a website for English & Spanish language learners, so while not 100% authentic, it was just the reading I was looking for. It's important to remember it's okay to use a wide variety of resources. I don't think this article is super culturally engaging by any means but it was a good way to introduce and practice reflexive verbs, practice forming questions and getting students used to interpretive reading activities. In the beginning of the year I like to highlight or bold the inference words; I don't want them to spend their time trying to find these words in the text- I want them to think critically about how they are being used! 

AP THEME: Beauty & Aesthetics/Contemporary Life
CONTEXT: Visual & Performing Arts/Lifestyles
This past year I needed a fun, engaging unit to wrap up the year with my Spanish 2 students. I was inspired by the Creative Language Classroom to teach a unit on Street/Urban art. Here are some resources that accompanied this unit at the end of the school year:

1. ¿Qué es el arte urbano?- This was a formative interpretive reading assessment we read in class to get students comfortable with some new vocabulary and introduce the new unit to them. This article came from a significantly larger article but it was modified for length to be more manageable for my Spanish 2 students.

2. ¿Cómo elegir mi nombre artístico?- After introducing the unit, working with vocabulary a little bit and looking at several examples of street art, I wanted students to have the opportunity to get a little creative. We used this article to discuss graffiti 'tags' and artistic names. I modified this article so that it would print cleaner. Sometimes formatting can mean the world of difference when it comes to being comprehensible to students! I didn't want to spend a lot of time on this article so the accompanying questions were used as a quick whole-class comprehension check and then we spent the rest of the class seeing who could come up with the most artistic tag!

3. Arte Urbano- This was the summative interpretive reading assessment that I used with my students after about two weeks of thoroughly diving into street art around the world. Although long, this assessment left students feeling successful at the end of the year because vocabulary and content were scaffolded along the way to help them comprehend. It is pivotal that the language we provide students throughout our units be comprehensible to prepare them for the tasks/assessments we want them to complete- or that they 'have to' complete.

AP THEME: Contemporary Life
CONTEXT: Travel and Leisure/Lifestyles
When traveling abroad, knowing what modes of transportation are available to you and which ones are the best to use is super helpful in getting from one place to another. During our unit on transportation, students have a summative interpretive reading. To help prepare for it, they first do formative reading practice with this activity. The article is from a travel website for Buenos Aires. The website has been updated since I initially made the activity in 2015 - this is one of the reasons we have opted to copy and paste the articles/readings into documents with the questions rather than having the students go to the websites to read. The current website has changed where the information is located (you have to open a different page) or has updated the information. 

The format for the questions is based on Toni Theisen's Interpretive Reading Assessment Template. 

AP THEME: Contemporary Life
CONTEXT: Love and Relationships
I love using short videos in class (cortometrajes). They are really engaging for students and there is so much you can do with them to get students using the target language.  MovieTalk is a teaching strategy that was developed by Dr. Ashley Hastings as part of the FOCAL Skills approach to language instruction. Martina Bex describes the MovieTalk process on her website, but essentially you find a short movie (5 minutes or less) with simple language (or no language), and play the movie in class, pausing frequently to talk with students about what is happening, ask questions, and make predictions. Use your targeted vocabulary and grammar as you talk about the video. 

I used the video El Cerebro Dividido in my Love and Relationships unit. The MovieTalk took the entire 45 minute class. My students weren't quite ready to just answer in Spanish, so I gave them a little time after each question to write their thoughts down before calling on them in order to give them increased processing time. I asked the questions, and then based on the students' answers I circled and discussed what was happening on the screen. They were really engaged and hooked on the video. 

To prep for the MovieTalk, I used www.videonot.es/ to take notes and write the questions I wanted to ask students in class. In VideoNot.es as you watch the video, it records the time that you start writing a question. It really helped me while I was doing the MovieTalk to know when to pause the video and ask a question. I created a Google Slides document with screen shots of the video with the questions I used to guide the discussion in class.