My first official unit with my Spanish 3 classes was democratically elected: Sports.

While I was initially unsure about this topic, mainly because I was not sure how to maintain the rigor of my initial unit with Spanish 5 when discussing sports. I actually really enjoyed this topic, and ultimately believe I was able to achieve both rigor and same time have some fun with the topic. It also served as a broad enough topic to be able to review many of the foundation topics of language: Conjugation, Grammatical Structure, Pronouns, Possessive, Plurals, etc. That the majority of my Spanish 3 students were very behind on.

Topics Covered:

-Lucha Libre: What does this popular sport say about Mexican culture.

-National Sports: What are nations trying to represent when they choose their national sport?

-Foosball Tournament

-Is there a link between organized sports and militarization

-College Athletes: Employees or Amateurs

-Are the sports of Latin America different from those in the US?

Learning Goals:

My learning goals are outlined in my Growth & Learning section.

In this unit I was really wrestling with who I am as an educator. With the challenges of teaching a heterogeneous group like Spanish 3, I was facing the temptation of simply handing our worksheets, and going over basic grammar everyday. While there is value in explicit grammar instruction, I found myself developing more challenging and engaging curriculum for the Spanish 5 students, and then simply reinforcing the grammar with my Spanish 3 group. The result was a less fun, and ultimately less enriching and provocative content.

This recognition, made me really push myself to not teach the Goddard Students a great class, and the College and Stars kids a mediocre class, but to really try and push myself as an educator to challenge all students and develop an engaging and challenging curriculum for everyone, regardless of academy.