Units and Resources for Spanish 1!

I don't teach Spanish 1 often, probably only three times in the last ten years, but I love teaching it! I would teach it every year if I could! Two years ago I relied heavily on Elena López and Amy Zimmer for resources. They are both amazing and shared so much with me! This year I tried some new things and still relied heavily on their resources for some units.

Here is the grid with the units and resources that I used this year. Some things I didn't use this year and those are in purple font. I kept them in there because they are good and might be useful for others, but they were replaced by some other new things this year.

For me, Spanish 1 is one semester long and class is 90 minutes long... during the last blog! It has been a fantastic class this semester. These are non-honors, mostly freshmen. And I am sooooo impressed with what they have acquired! They know so many random words, sometimes I have to ask, "How do you know that?" Many of the words come from different stories.

Because I have 90 minute classes, I have a lot of "ongoing" units that you will see in the grid. Also, we do a lot of Quizlet Live with vocab and quesitons and answers... and now we are also doing lots of Gimkit!

Here are some of the new things that I did this year in Spanish 1:

• OWI (One Word Images) -  We did this to start the semester. We only did four of them, but I loved it! Highly recommended! If you want to learn more, search some blogs and/or read: A Natural Approach to Stories. 
• Story/Description Listening (not really official "Story Listening") with a reward (= watchinga music video)! So far we have done the first 13 of the stories in this TPT product   (update: there are now SIXTEEN stories/songs the week int there) and we will do a couple more by the end of the year. They have acquired so much from these stories/descriptions and we have a fantastic playlist of popular music that they know (Communities Standard: Lifelong Learning: Learners set goals and reflect on their progress in using languages for enjoyment, enrichment, and advancement.)
• Textivate - I bought the premium subscription and it is totally worth it! Check out an example of a Sequence that my students would do. It is based on the story "Alvaro tiene un problema."
• Sr. Wooly - Sometimes a story is a big part of the unit, but I also have students do the nuggets on the side, for homework, which mostly occurs during our TASC blog (45 minute extra help/enrichment/work blog that we have every day). Students acquire a ton from these silly videos! And they almost never complain about doing nuggets... I am pretty sure that they really enjoy them! My Spanish 1s are on their eighth round of nuggets. So far, they have done No lo tengo, la invitación, me duele, ?Puedo ir al baño?, Las Excusas, ?Adónde vas?, Billy la Bufanda, and (currently) Guapo. They will also do La Confesión de Víctor.
• Living on One Dollar - We used Eric Herman's Readings to go along with the eight Change Series videos, instead of just watching the documentary. 

In case you missed it, here is what I teach in Spanish 2 and 3 and here are 25+ units that I have used in Cultura y Civilización.