I've been getting a lot of very similar questions this month on email about using my books with textbooks other than Exprésate (the textbook we use in my district, and the one that my lesson plans are aligned with in terms of vocab lists and grammar topics.) Here is a recent email I received:
Hi, my name is Tammy. I teach Level 1. I taught middle school Spanish for 16 years
and I've been teaching high school level for the past 2. I've always pretty much followed the
textbook, but added my own supplemental materials and ideas. I'm looking for way to "shake up"
my teaching that gets me away from the textbook more often and gets my students
more motivated and using Spanish so I ordered your 1A and 1B books. At our school, we use the Avancemos series. I'm excited to use your lessons but am
concerned about the students moving to level 2.
The level 2 teachers stick to the textbooks. Have you looked at the Avancemos series? I know
that your lessons are modeled after a different textbook, but have you compared
them? Any suggestions for how to
incorporate the textbook occasionally so that my students aren't overwhelmed
when they go into level 2 and deal exclusively with the textbook? Any suggestions you have would be greatly
appreciated. Thanks so much!!!
My response:
Hi Tammy,
I haven't compared Exprésate (our textbook) to Avancemos, but I'd be willing to bet
it's almost exactly the same. Exprésate
(and every other mainstream Spanish 1 textbook I've seen) starts out with
greetings and introductions, then goes into numbers, colors, family, school
supplies and subjects, food, houses and rooms, food, dishes, activities,
clothing, shopping, etc. The grammar topics are present tense, adjectives,
pronouns, present progressive, and a little touch on preterit in chapter 8 (the
last chapter I drew from for my 1B book.) There may be some variance in the
order of those basic vocab groups in Avancemos,
but by the end of Spanish 1 you will have taught a ton of just about any
textbook’s vocab lists. If you are supposed to be on a certain chapter during a
certain month, you could probably rearrange my lessons to match the vocab set
you're on in Avancemos. If you didn't
already, look at the vocab lists for my 2009 Spanish 1A and 1B and you'll see
exactly the vocab and grammar sequence I used and how well it fits with what
you need.
Link to 1A vocab list is here.
Link to 1B vocab list is here.
[UPDATED 2017 Spanish 1A Lessons available in my TPT store now.]
Link to 1A vocab list is here.
Link to 1B vocab list is here.
[UPDATED 2017 Spanish 1A Lessons available in my TPT store now.]
As far as students being
overwhelmed by the textbook in Spanish 2, they probably won't like the textbook
but I'm betting they won't be overwhelmed by the level of difficulty by any
means. They'll be freewriting 100 word narrative essays in Spanish in 10
minutes with no dictionary, be able to tell a basic story in Spanish off the
top of their heads, and be able to read (translate) a full page of Spanish out
loud in five minutes or less by the end of Spanish 1. Now what I would do so
that you don't run into problems meeting the textbook teachers’ expectations is
use either your textbook grammar exercises if they make sense (Exprésate's
don't) or find other grammar worksheets and teach the heck out of conjugating
present tense verbs and whatever other grammar topics the Spanish 2 teachers
expect your kids to know. I teach explicit grammar for the final 15 minutes of
every block and that works really well for me.
So that's how I would
mostly incorporate the textbook, is use it as a resource for grammar. And of
course if Avancemos has any other
activities that you've used and liked, throw 'em in when you're on that set of
vocab in my lessons.
Hope this helps! Thanks
again and let me know if you have any other questions that arise.