Amy Mardis

World Language Methods

EDUC 688 107 Spring Semester
Professor Thomasina White
23 January 2017
Assignment #1

Page 100: EPISODE 1, Task A

How does this plan compare with the unit plans in your school?

While my school does not have any unit plans for the Spanish department, we are
provided with a Scope and Sequence every report period. The Scope and Sequence lists the
overarching themes for the report period, the critical concepts, major performance tasks, and the
critical vocabulary that will be tested on the benchmark exam. The Scope and Sequence is then
broken down by instructional weeks in order to provide a suggested pacing guide.
Corresponding textbook pages and activity numbers are also listed for each suggested content
grouping. In essence, our Scope and Sequence is a basic curriculum guide, summed up cynically
yet accurately on page 74 of The Teachers Handbook as nothing more than a list of the
textbooks table of contents, consisting of a series of grammar points and sometimes including
vocabulary themes.

An excerpt of my schools Scope and Sequence can be seen below:

 In my opinion, the glaring difference between the curriculum provided to me and the
Sample Unit Plan in the book is that my curriculum seems to be designed based on the goal of
mastering the content of one textbook and one textbook only. There are no mentions of state
foreign language standards, national foreign language standards, or overarching learning goals.
The Sample Unit Plan from Nebraskas Foreign Language Frameworks Sample Units, however,
is designed using the principles of backward-design. The Goals and Standards to which the unit
will be aligned are clearly delineated at the top of the document. Furthermore, the Sample Unit
Plan includes the assessments that will be given throughout the unit, instructional strategies for
teachers, and broad ideas for resources that could be used in addition to the textbook. Even
though the assessments, instructional strategies, and resources sections are not extremely
detailed, they provide direction for the unit that I imagine would provide each teacher with the
autonomy to tailor each lesson or assessment to the specific needs of his or her classroom.
Lastly, an important feature of the Sample Unit Plan that my schools Scope and Sequence is
lacking is that it clearly states a Culminating Assessment/Performance Task (which in this case is
a role play scenario of shopping in a Mexican market) and the Rubric upon which the task will
be graded.

Which elements of this plan do you find a challenge? Why?

While I mentioned that a strength of the Nebraska Unit Plan is its big picture approach,
one of its fallbacks is its lack of specificity. It would be challenging to create a lesson plan based
off of this Unit Plan because it does not include key vocabulary, key phrases, or details regarding
the Instructional Strategies or the Assessments. For example, one instructional strategy that
is listed is practice with commands. Is this referring to affirmative commands or negative
commands? In what situations are students going to be using these commands? Are these
commands going to be formed using verbs that have already been taught or will the teacher need
to introduce new verbs? Because of the vagueness of the Unit Plan teachers will likely have a
hard time sequencing the daily lessons in order to lead students to the desired language
outcomes.