Plan Your Whole Year: What I Teach in Spanish One

When it comes to planning your Spanish 1 class, sometimes you have a textbook and sometimes you have nothing. In my case, I have usually had to develop my own materials. 

No time to read? Get my free Spanish 1 curriculum map right here. 

Developing your own materials can feel overwhelming, but it’s actually pretty freeing because you have the opportunity to teach your students what they really need. Instead of following a curriculum calendar, you can set the pace and pause to review or reteach any materials that your students need support with.

That being said, here’s what I teach in Spanish one.

First: Brain Dump

The first thing I do when I determine what I want my students to learn is a brain dump. Here’s a link to my freebie unit plan brainstorm sheet. When I brain dump for year-long planning, I make a list of all of the content that I want my students to know throughout the year.

It might look like this ⬇️

Content Connections

Once I have a big list of every topic I want to cover, I start to make connections between the topics to see what I can teach together. For example, I might teach weather and clothing together because I can talk about what to wear based on the forecast. I could build numbers into this to bring up the date or temperatures, but I might make that a review element because it’s not the primary focus. 

Sneaky Grammar

I don’t teach explicit grammar. In order to make sure my students learn all the grammar structures that I want them to know (present, present progressive, reflexive verbs, super seven verbs, etc.), I make a list of these as well.

Next, I look at appropriate ways to fit them into my content. For example I can teach reflexive with routines because there are a lot of reflexive verbs with routines. I can teach present progressive with studies and classes, because my students are currently studying.

Keep It Fun

Remember that Spanish one is students’ first experience with learning a language. We would hate to turn them off from the language or switch to another language class because they’re not enjoying studying Spanish.

In order to keep it fun, I build in projects at the end of each unit. This allows for students to show off their skills and take a break from active content learning. I also build in a week of reflection and review after each unit because it helps my students to reflect on their goals (click here for my student reflection worksheet).

A flexible week also gives them opportunities to make up any missing assignments or correct any work that they want to improve.

Next Steps:

1. Get my free Spanish 1 Curriculum Map.
2. What about Spanish 2?  Check out the blog post!