My Spanish 4 numbers this upcoming year are the largest that I have ever had!  I will have 34 students which is 10 more than the previous highest number.  Here are my plans for semester 1 of Spanish 4.  You can see my Spanish 3 plans here and my Spanish 2 plans here.

Quarter 1:

I begin the year by giving them this sheet and we talk about their answers.

Just like in my other classes, I like to begin the year by reading a really easy novel in groups.  For Spanish 4, I will give them the choice to read Frida Kahlo, Noches Misteriosas en Granada or La Vampirata.  They read it in groups and we don’t do any activities with it.

First MovieTalk of the Year:  We do the Atrevete Cambia commercial in this post  .

I am sure that the first question I will get is “Can we watch Internado?”  So we continue watching the series on Fridays.  We will first review what we have already seen but in Spanish 4 we do fewer activities with each episode.  However, we will do some readings with the first couple episodes that we watch this year.

My goal for the first few weeks is to set the tone for the year, model the procedures, and get them back into the Spanish routine.

Music: New this year: we will study the song Sofia by Alvaro Soler and Duele el corazón by Enrique Iglesias in detail.  We will do embedded readings of the lyrics/story and focus on the structures from the song.  I hope to have a blog post about this in the near future.

Quarter 2:

Novel/Unit study:   We begin a unit about the Spanish Civil War.  We start by watching La Lengua de las Mariposas.  I also pre-teach vocabulary from the novel La Hija del Sastre (some of the pre-teaching takes place during quarter 1).  I hook them by doing the bandana activity as described in the teacher’s guide.  We read an embedded reading version of chapter 1 before reading the actual novel.  It is a way to introduce them to the novel.  While reading the novel, we do the activities that are in the teacher’s guide.   At about half-way through the novel, we watch Pan’s Labyrinth and at the end we watch the Devil’s Backbone.

New this year: while reading some of the chapters, we will do reading groups.  The class will be divided into those who want to read independently, with a partner, or with me.  Carrie Toth has a great blog post about this HERE.  For other chapters, we will do Reader’s Theater.

When Christmas season comes around, we watch Christmas TV commercials.  There are some great activities HERE.  New this year I want to try an elimination bracket of tv commercials much like March music madness.

All year long, we listen to songs from the song packet.

Of course, if I hear of anything new, compelling, and fun, we will do it!  My students will guide my curriculum as they are the center of my classroom.

This is, of course, what I do in my level 4 class and there are certainly many other possibilities.