During Idea Lab on June 14 and 15, Anthony, Xuemei and I sat down to work on a collective foreign language curriculum. Our goal was to to create a Scope and Sequence for French, Spanish, and Mandarin for grades 5-8. During these 2 days, we worked specifically on grades 6 and 8.

On Tuesday, Anthony shared his Grade 6 Spanish Scope and Sequence with us. We all agreed on a similar progression of grammatical concepts, as well as common projects and assessments. The overview of the Scope and Sequence is outlined below.

At the beginning of the year, we will start with a review of what students learned during 5th grade. This includes the alphabet, vowels, numbers 1-100, and personal pronouns (je, tu, il, elle). We will review geography of French-speaking countries around the world. We will then dive into reviewing numbers #1-100, personal pronouns and the verbs “to be” and ”to have,” which form the basis for speaking about both the present and past tenses in French. 

For the first unit, we will introduce common adjectives as a way to describe people, using physical and personality characteristics (i.e She is blond, short, funny and intelligent). Students will be able to look at an image of a person and write 2 sentences describing them.

The next unit will introduce basic clothing items. Students will learn several “er” verb conjugations as well as some irregular verbs related to clothing, and review definite vs. indefinite pronouns (the skirt vs. a skirt). They will then work on creating their Fashion Show project.

Then we present expressions with the verb “to have,” which are frequently used in everyday situations. These include: to be cold/hot, hungry, thirsty, right/wrong, etc. 

Next, we will study the verb “to go” in the present (i.e. I’m going to the park) and near present tenses (i.e. I’m going to go to the park tomorrow). This unit will be centered around places in a city (school, library, park, etc.) as well as prepositions of place (à, au, aux, etc.). 

In the following unit, we will dive into the Famous Woman Project in collaboration with the Art Department. Students will spend the next 2-3 weeks doing research on a famous French-speaking woman, writing out a script, and recording themselves using audio and video. 

Finally, we will introduce family members and review personal pronouns (I, you, he/she/they, etc.) Students will be able to talk about and describe family members, including what activities they like to participate in. This will incorporate the verb “faire” as well as some common “ir” verbs.

This was a great opportunity to collaborate with my fellow language teacher colleagues, and I look forward to more collaboration in the future.