Are you a proud department of one, or part of a curriculum design team for world language? Your French curriculum or Spanish curriculum can be created from scratch or combined with other tools through the age-old elements of backward design. However, world language has some specific challenges that need to be addressed when working on your curriculum map for middle school or high school.
Below you’ll find my 9 steps for creating or revamping your world language units and content to make whatever resources you have work for your school. It doesn’t have to take all year either! With proper planning and some discipline (AKA knowing when to stop researching for ideas) you could get a solid idea map up and running in 4 hours or less.
Curriculum = Faster Daily Planning
From working as a department of 1 Spanish teacher in a rural school, I know the importance of having resources to get you through the year and not spending forever on curriculum. However, some time invested in good design will save you at least 3 hours a week in planning just by giving you a clear roadmap to follow and a direction for your Spanish assessments.
Making all the large guiding decisions of what your compass looks like – aka your curriculum – makes navigating the year faster and easier. Lots of teachers try to wing it by going through the year without at least a curriculum map, but it often means that you spend twice as much decision energy during your planning period trying to decide where to go next. The curriculum map isn’t your final decision, it’s your compass to help make the everyday decisions that much faster and easier.
This became even more important while working to craft a proficiency-centered curriculum based on IPAs and content units for a large district. These French units already existed, but needed revised assessments based on the real ACTFL performance indicators.
Free Unit – Based World Language Curriculum with Sample Lessons
I got the best experience with curriculum development while working to create the first statewide proficiency-centered curriculum for South Carolina. You can find all of these units and assessment samples for all languages: Chinese, German, Latin, French, Spanish, and all of those languages in elementary immersion as well.
9 Steps to Effective World Language Curriculum Design
Watch the full class above on the 9 steps to flesh out a full roadmap to make your curriculum a scattered brain dump to a clean, well-organized compass for your whole year.
Free Curriculum Classes
Check out the playlist here of over 12 classes from my spring series on curriculum for world language teachers – you can watch every class as you build your curriculum, or pick and choose the topics that fit your curriculum map.
Curriculum Workshop
Are you in need of step-by-step guidance in implementing the 9 steps above? Check out my curriculum workshop here especially for world language teachers. We’ll craft you an IPA-centered curriculum outline based on ACFTL standards in less than four hours.
Map Out Your Curriculum
Ready to learn more about mapping out your Curriculum?
Download the Roadmap to Proficiency for World Language Teachers. There are even more steps outlined in there for how to start reframing your curriculum and lesson plans.
I’ll also be doing a full presentation on curriculum design during my summer conference, Practical and Comprehensible 2021 (Back to School edition). Register for free here to do some deep dives into your curriculum map, plus 24 other expert presenters on proficiency-centered topics.
Keep doing amazing work in your classroom and I can’t wait to hear about how your world language curriculum turns out.
Free Conference for World Language Teachers
If you’re ready to jump in and get started with proficiency and teaching with comprehensible input, I have another resource to help you on your journey below:
Sign Up for the Next Practical & Comprehensible Free Virtual Conference! Every year, I gather together the best and brightest in the field of world language to share with you how to switch to proficiency through comprehensible input. All with practical ideas that you can use tomorrow. It’s a FREE virtual conference – join the waitlist and find out more about the speakers here.
Rooting for you,
Hi, my name is Carla Tapia and I teach Spanish and French online, I live in Canada. I would like to start teaching French to adults but it’s hard to find the right materials. I am looking for something similar to Off2Class. What can you recommend for complete beginners? Thanks!
Hey Carla! That’s exciting. I don’t teach adults, but I used to tutor through my college days prepping to be a French teacher. Some of the best sessions were simply teaching students the most high-frequency verbs for communication and how to start building their conversation toolkit. Use c’est, il est, elle est, il y a, je veux, etc. Write down what you’re saying, sign it, and draw it, anything to be understood. The very best materials are student-created based on what they’re trying to express about themselves and the world around them and teacher-created to help them do it.
I’m not sure what off2class is.
While you’re searching for materials, look for stories that adults would find interesting – reading is one of the most effective ways to teach language since you pick up the vocabulary in context for a purpose. it’s a lot faster too. Best of luck to you!