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I encourage communication between students as much as possible. If you’re asking a friend, Can you lend me a pencil? ask it in Spanish. We do activities where students write dialogues and they communicate together. We do debates where students develop their arguments together. So not only are they doing interpersonal and interpretive tasks, but now they’re challenging each other.
– Meghan Zingle
YEAR AT A GLANCE
Geography of Spain (physical and political)
Events that have influenced people today in Spain (history)
Integrated into above units:
Meghan Zingle teaches grades 10-12 Spanish at Glastonbury High School in Glastonbury, Connecticut, a suburb of Hartford. Many of the town’s 32,000 residents are professionals. The high school, with 1,800 students, offers a comprehensive curriculum for college and career preparation as well as a regional vocational Agriscience and Technology Program. The Glastonbury Foreign Language Program teaches Spanish in grades 1-12, French and Japanese in grades 6-12, and Russian in grades 7-12. Latin is offered in the high school.
The teachers in the Glastonbury Foreign Language Department base their curriculum (see Resources) on the Standards. They also identify a theme to be the focus for each year of language learning. The theme for the Spanish II curriculum is Spain, focusing on the question, Who is a Spaniard? Students become familiar with the geographical, political, and cultural diversity within Spain, and look at one community in depth from the perspective of one of its citizens. When designing her lessons, Ms. Zingle first considers topics that interest students, and then looks at ways that students can use the information they learn. She also considers the grammar and vocabulary that students need for each unit.
In the videotaped lesson, students wrote original radio announcements based on their initial interpretations of the painting Guernica. Although students were somewhat familiar with Spanish history from previous Spanish and world history classes, not everyone knew about the historical context of the painting prior to this lesson. All students were, however, comfortable with the vocabulary and communication skills needed for the partner discussions, creative writing, and contextual reading in this lesson, as they had been studying Spanish since early elementary school. After this lesson, each student chose and researched a topic in Spanish history, and presented his or her findings in oral and written form to the class.