Third Graders perform a Christmas Pageant in Spanish.
signature projects such as the Picasso unit integrating Spanish
with Arts instruction in the Second Grade or the Third Grade
Christmas Pageant told in Spanish.
After the first year of implementation with the Kindergarten,
the original plan to roll out one grade level at a time was
accelerated and the following year, the Pre-K as well as the
First and Second Grades were added to the groups of students
studying Spanish. The third year of the roll out, Third, Fourth
and Fifth Grades were added. For several years, teachers had
to work especially hard to manage the content to ensure that
each staggered class covered the basics while also moving
forward into new areas. Certain topics such as family, food
and descriptions were spiraled throughout the Lower School
into early Upper School years because student capacity to
describe had to deepen and they had to expand their mastery
of related vocabulary while adding linguistic functions that
would increase their capacity for expressing preferences or
negotiating meaning to solve a problem. In other words, while
initially a boy might learn how to describe choices he makes
at lunch, as the sequence progressed, he needed to expand
that to describe an allergy or a missing utensil. Since then,
we continue to create real-world tasks that are unscripted
and yet provide an authentic opportunity for students to use
the language. Whether this is by creating a pen pal letter or
preparing a Spanish language tour of the school, our boys
are learning what they can do with language, not just what
they learn about language. These “Can-Do” statements are
the newest goal of our curriculum development. They are
similar to an objective a teacher might set in his or her lesson
plan, but different because they are coined in student friendly
language so that students can also be engaged in the purpose of
each lesson to advance their proficiency in meaningful ways.
Recently, the American Council of Teachers of Foreign
Language (ACTFL) reformatted their World Readiness
Standards 1 to capture the traditional four skills of reading,
writing, listening, and speaking to focus on three modes of
communication that integrate these:
Yo me llamo: ........................................................................................... 1 pi ❍
1 th ❍ 1 chi ❍
Sign your name on the cuff of the sleeve when you can complete the task successfully!
I can
describe four things
about someone so
you can identify
that person.
I can
describe a person
so you can tell if
you would like
to meet them.
Winter 2018 • 13