Alternate title: “Data Nerd Stuff.” Brace yourselves.

So shortly before the official decision to go hybrid, my district sent out a survey for all Spanish teachers to list their Top 10 content/skills/standards for the level(s) they teach in order to prepare learning plans for the district. I thought it was brilliant to narrow the focus for potential online scenarios, because frankly, the level of input possible without regular, mandatory face time in the same place, is…disappointing. What’s more, even with face time, our faces will barely be visible, so there goes that whole set of contextual clues! Never mind the mask muffling.

This was my chance!

Now I had to be careful to try to balance current district units–which are really pretty flexible and communication oriented–as well as North Carolina World Language Essential Standards (phew! mouthful) I tried to sneak my own personal PBL goals in when I answered the survey, just a little, but mainly I tried to keep my responses oriented towards the 3 modes of communication.

In the end, it was still the summer, and some of us are just trying not to hyperventilate daily about sending our own kids into the pandemic morass that is face-to-face education, never mind our own safety with multiple sets of kids per day. We didn’t get as many responses as hoped. BUT that means the person tasked with creating learning plans based on those surveys didn’t have too much to wade through. And they needed someone to do that wading and creating for each level!

This was my chance!

Sorting

First thing I did was set up a chart with headers that aligned with our NCWLES: Interpersonal, Intepretive, Presentational, Cultural. Ultimately, I added a grammar category too, because honestly, I couldn’t figure out which mode some of the submitted Top 10’s would fit under.

Red flag #1.

I then copied each standard into the appropriate columns, highlighting duplicates to show that multiple people agreed. I may have straight-up vetoed a couple (alphabets are below Novice Low). But in the end, I noticed that there were only TWO content/skill/standards under interpretive. Total. (Both were mine.)

Red flag #2.

On the other hand, I’ve been told North Carolina intentionally lists interpersonal first as a sign of its significance and priority in the courses, and there were several in that category. The comprehensible-input-oriented side of me sees that as maybe a maroon flag, but the community-oriented side of me kind of shrugs and says, “Well, yeah. Why else learn a language?”

Red flag #3: there were significantly more in the grammar column than in the interpersonal column even.

And guess what? There is exactly one standard in the NCWLES designated for level 1 that pertains to verb endings–NM.CLL.2.5, if you must know.

And THEN I went through and designated all of the Novice Low or Novice Mid standards I could for each topic, put them in a sort of preliminary order:

1. Basic Conversation
2. Exchange information
3. Interests
4. Classroom Elements
5. Describing People*
6. Interpreting Texts
7. Weather
8. Making Plans
9. Regular Verbs
10. Compare & Contrast

This may or may not be the most balanced list of concept/skill/standards, but I think this covers A) our district units (though some kind of merged) and B) the NC Essential Standards.

Analyzing

But I couldn’t stop there. Oh no. I needed a spreadsheet to see the distribution of the NCWLES over the concept/skill/standards, to make sure there was some kind of parity and that I was not shamelessly repeating the same standard to justify a pet unit. So I made a chart separated by

• Level: Novice Low, Novice Mid
  (technically Novice High is not in level 1 standards, but a lot of Mid can be stretched in that direction)
• Strand: CLL – Connections to Language & Literacy, COD – Connections to Other Disciplines, and CMT – Communities
• Mode: Interpersonal, Interpretive, Presentational + Cultural
• Individual standards: 1.1-4.4

And THEN I counted: how many standards from each mode were represented by level, and how many units represented each mode by level. The integers represent the designated learning plan order.

I don’t feel too bad about not expressly focusing on Novice Low interpretation, because I think every unit inevitably will include word-level comprehension. I DO feel squicky that that was all the culture incorporated. And I didn’t even satisfy colleagues’ request to teach countries and capitals because I just couldn’t find a NC standard it fit. Surely those can fit into other units, though, right? Like weather or compare/contrast?

Next steps

From here, I will be filling in the learning plan template for each concept/skill/standard. Each learning plan includes:

• Key vocabulary
• “Learning it” tasks
• “Practice it” tasks and
• “Evidence”

These learning plan “playlists” are supposed to follow up on in-class concept/skill/standard introductions and could potentially be required, suggested, or ignored–all or in part, so there is a lot of flexibility. Our district recently decided everyone in middle school and high school needs to be on Canvas instead of Google Classroom (supposedly to help with e-learning attendance), so that adds a wrinkle to the planning, but not too much.

I am a little nervous, however, since I found out that several middle schools are still looking for Spanish 1 teachers, meaning these learning plans may well be given to a sub!

So if you have any thoughts on how to keep these tasks proficiency AND sub-oriented, I am all ears!