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Sample Unit

Community based project – various topics (i.e. the Dream Act)

+Target student population

Advanced Low – Mid HL & L2 college students (based on ACTFL guidelines)

Class meets three days a week (MWF) for 60 minutes each class

+Content Objective

To engage students in the community and make them conscious of issues and values that affect the Hispanic community in their area.

+Language Objectives:

Push students to the next proficiency level: Advanced-high to Superior.

Speaking: narrate in different time frames; support opinions; discuss topics abstractly; hypothesize.

Writing: peer editing, summarize findings, compare/contrast.

Listening: understand different accents/register/cultural nuances.

Reading: understand complex texts and vocabulary.

Agenda

+Week 1 - Day 1

Warm-up activity: Discuss 5 common values among Hispanics.

Students will read an article that outlines the most common values of the Hispanic community.

Pre-reading activity: Guessing the meaning of key vocabulary from context

Post-reading activities:

Students will fill out the “Vocabulary Rubric”.

Students will fill out a Venn diagram to compare/contrast values among mainstream U.S. and Hispanic culture.

Report back – open discussion.

+Week 1 - Day 2

Students will… fill out the text-to-self

connections handout. write a brief paragraph to

illustrate an experience/situation related to one of the values presented in the article. [Based on the previous task.]

Peer editing.

+Week 1 - Day 3Model an issue

Students will… have watched a brief

documentary on the Dream Act issue (assigned as homework).

out a dialectal journal entry and then share it in a group. [Post Activity]

discuss infer on possible outcomes/solutions/next steps to improve/resolve the issue.

L2’s report back to the class.

+Week 2 - Day 4

Divide class into groups.

Groups will choose an issue and sub-topics.

Assign tasks among members to begin research. (i.e. statistics, trends,

policy, etc.)

Students will research at home in the internet and find two articles in Spanish related to the topic and sub-topics assigned.

+Week 2 - Day 5

Students will… share their research with

their group. (bring in articles,

computers, etc.) create a list of 10 critical

words to learn and share. fill out a previewing and

predicting handout (to compare final results).