Skip to main content
Blog post covers 2024 2024 09 30 T165827 025

What to teach in Spanish 1 and 2?

May 2, 2016

I taught Spanish 1 and 2 for 3 years after switching to TCI, and here is what I ended up creating--keep in mind that this is just what I did, and even if you are using my curriculum, you are free to do it differently than I did! Use the curriculum maps provided below to determine what you will need for next year, and purchase it tomorrow or Wednesday (May 3-4) to save 28 percent during the TpT Teacher Appreciation sale!

Spanish 1

I taught this over two years at the middle school level (Spanish 1A/1B), although many other units were mixed in there (some that you can buy, like holiday units, and some that I have not made available for purchase). I designed this curriculum backward from the novel 'Esperanza', using the vocabulary from the novel as the basis for this curriculum and linking each set of structures to a cultural topic. I would recommend teaching "Brandon Brown quiere un perro" and "Agentes secretos y el mural de Picasso" as novel units even before you reach Esperanza (and have your students read still other novels during free voluntary reading time!). If you want to make it through the full curriculum in one year, use the estimated teaching length in the following document to figure out which supplemental units you want to work with and which to skip. You could also bump Esperanza to the beginning of Spanish 2 if you run out of time in Spanish 1.

Spanish 2

When I started teaching this course to my 8th graders, it was a special course approved just for my students to get them a high school credit. This was because mine were the first students in the district to complete a full three years of Spanish at the middle school level. I had to align my 8th grade curriculum with the high school Spanish 2 curriculum so that my kiddos could get credit. They needed to be competent in past tenses, so each unit in Level 2 targets a specific past tense construction (-ar preterite regular verbs, for example).

Also--if you are using my complete Spanish curriculum for Level 1 and/or Level 2, please join this Facebook group that Sara Chronister started. It's a place where teachers that are using my curriculum units can share ideas and ask and answer questions.

Join our newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter and get instant access to 150+ free resources for language teachers.

Subscribe Today