1st Week of Spanish Class Unit 1

One of my most popular posts last year was 1st Day of Spanish Class. This year I am going the post about the tentative plan for the 1st Week of Spanish class. It is a mix of CI, proficiency and getting to know you. If you are in planning mode for that first week, make sure to check out all posts with the label back to school. UPDATE – you can find my 2018 Plans here (including French class as well!)

After the PLC conference that I attended I realized I need to be very purposeful with the essential learning targets and the formative assessments I use to see if students have met these targets. Since I will be starting a new school, my personal goals for the first week are to learn all students names, start to build a positive class community, and set expectations for the year. While on a walk today I decided the unit plan.

1st Unit of Spanish – 3 P’s – Procedures, Proficiency & Positive People.

I will try and do as much of this as possible in Spanish, but this is the one week of the year that I think English is necessary to clarify expectations and make sure all have a grasp on the concept of proficiency. These students are used to a legacy teacher, where I think proficiency and performance assessments may be new concepts. First trimester I will have Spanish I, II & III, but to make sure everyone is on the same page proficiency wise, we are going to have basically the same unit for all levels, with more Spanish in the higher levels. I got a lot of ideas for the goals and performance tasks from the Shelby County Schools proficiency pre unit. As a class, we will have the following three main goals for the first week or so.

1st Unit Essential Learning Targets

I can…

… introduce and state the name of everyone in my class in Spanish.

… explain the expectations and procedures of Spanish class.

… explain what proficiency and performance are and how they affect my language learning.

After the first unit, the plan is for students to demonstrate they have met these goals by completing the following three performance tasks. All of these tasks are formative, so I do not plan on assigning a grade. I had though about giving a grade for the presentational writing, but since it will be in English, I do not want it to skew the overall writing grade. Any ideas on this would be appreciated!

1st Unit Performance Tasks

Presentational Speaking

Introduce each person in your class to each other in the target language.

Interpersonal

Discuss with classmate the expectations, rules and procedures of Spanish class.

Presentational Writing

Write about your proficiency goal and what strategies and performance tools you will use to help you reach that goal.

Below is what I tentatively put together to give to students so we are all on the same page, and they see exactly what they need to do to meet their essential learning targets. I would love feedback to let me know if I am on the right track or not!

UPDATE – if you would like to download an editable version of the unit plan, please click here.