#23 - What Should I Teach In Levels 1 & 2? Units and Skills

Ever wondered: am I teaching the right things? How do I know that my units are getting the job done?
This episode mini-series on unit and skills to include in each level was inspired by a common question from the Practical Proficiency Network membership.

Here, we'll dive into years 1 & 2 of your world language program.

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Transcript

0:53

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) What's up? Que lo que? E salut! World Language Teachers, welcome to the Practical Proficiency Podcast, where we make the transition to proficiency-oriented instruction in your world language class, in a way that works for you, your unique context and teaching style, and doesn't sacrifice your well-being along the way. I'm your host, Devyn Gunning, the teacher, author, conference host, curriculum creator, and consultant behind La Libre Language Learning. This podcast is for the creative world language teacher like you, who's ready to ditch the overwhelming pressure of switching to acquisition-driven instruction and CI overnight. You're ready to discover how using more target language in class can actually bring you and your students more joy, instead of adding to a plate with practical, authentic, and down-to-earth strategies that don't require reinventing the wheel or more training. We'll work together towards the magic of a community-based, target-language-rich classroom rooted in the power of community and comprehensible input. Let's go! What you're going to teach in level 1, what you're going to teach in level 2, or you know, level 1A, level 1B, whatever you're calling it, how do you decide, dang, what are the best topics to teach about, or what are the best thematic units that are going to get my students in that nice, pretty little spiral program that leads them along the proficiency continuum, but in a way that's really efficient, and it's going to be fun for them, and make sense for what levels they're at in their proficiency. That's what we're going to be diving into today, so let's get started. Welcome everybody to the Practical Proficiency Podcast, and we're talking about one of my favorite elements today, which is curriculum, and how to build a solid, exceptional program by working with the natural orders of acquisition with language, working with what we already know from the actual performance indicators to be markers of novice low, mid, high, and intermediate low. We are diving into how can we reflect that in our programs by choosing really great units. So, this comes from a very common question that I get, so tell me if this is anything like you. Are you working by yourself or with a very teeny tiny but mighty team to flesh out an entire world language program, and you've been given pretty much free reign to decide like, oh, here's what we're going to teach in level one, that's up to me. Here's what we're going to teach in level two, that is also up to me. I also might even be teaching levels one through five, so I get to decide the whole program. Oh my gosh, it's nice in a way, because you have a lot of freedom, but at the same time, it's so overwhelming. So, let's get into some great ideas for how to choose the best thematic content by either your level or your year, however your program works. What we're going to do in this episode is I'm going to walk you through what I give my Practical Proficiency Network members, which is a PD membership to help make your journey to proficiency a lot more practical, a lot more sustainable, and a lot more joyful. We talk about things like this to make sure that your curriculum is actually working for you instead of you putting a lot of work into your curriculum. Your content in class should be something that works naturally with the language processes, right? Like, we shouldn't be moving against those things. At the same time, there's a lot of options out there, and it can be confusing because there's so many different directions you can go in, especially if you're talking about your intro level or your year one, your level one, whatever you're calling it. But if it's novice low to novice mid, whoo, there's so many options for what you could do, right? Like, ooh, let's do a food truck unit, or let's do a unit all about describing animals, or let's do a house unit, let's do a family unit, woof, or let's not do units at all, let's just focus on skills. There are so many choices out there. To help you make the best choices that will indeed get your students to where you want them to be in a really efficient way, I'm going to give you a list of two things. First, in year one, we're going to talk about, these are your must-dos. These are the skills that you need to include in order for your students to actually be able to spread their wings and fly out of novice high. Ooh, that rhymed, I'm doing some good work here. These are the things that your students need in order to progress and get into the other more difficult layers of language acquisition. So it's very important that when you're working with novices, and quick pause here, if you're unsure, what does a novice look like? What is a novice low? What is novice mid? What is novice high? There are other podcast episodes for you where we dive deep into this topic. So you'll find them linked in the show notes below, if you're watching the video, that will give you a lot more information about what all of those levels mean. But to make this really easy for you, I'm going to give you a really nice, easy list of, okay, these are the things that you have to have in your program before your students graduate to novice high, and then once they're in novice high, how you can get them to graduate into intermediate low. This will move them along the continuum. Let's start first with the must-dos. When you hear this list, it'll probably seem familiar, because in level one, or the year one, the first year of language, most people are teaching about the same thing, but their content might vary a little bit depending on their individual preferences, if they want to do specific cultural deep dives, so cool by the way, by all means go for it, but I often find when I look at curriculums and when I'm working for language apps and programs that there's a couple things that are usually missing from those first important encounters with language that create that foundation that allow your students to actually spread some wings and start expanding. Let's get into it. Year one, here are your must-dos, so check these off and give yourself a pat on the back if you know that you're doing these. Classroom survival phrases, have to, absolute, don't leave home without it. You know this already, because you're in a classroom setting, and since your classroom is the communicative context, it is a must-do. You must teach those classroom survival phrases, and it goes beyond just the, hey, the first two weeks of class, I'm going to teach you the things like, puis-je aller aux toilettes, and things like that. You're teaching them a bit of direction, of, you know, like, passez-moi les papiers, passez-les-moi, you know, pass me the papers. You're teaching them things like, fermez la porte, ouvrez la porte, open and close the door, things that they hear all the time in class. Have you ever noticed that your students pick up and start to say back to you the phrases that you say all the time in class? Like by the middle of the year, they're like, oui, no, you know, like they start to say it in a sing-songy voice, boom, that's your best friend in language. That's how you know it's working. Because you say those phrases so many times, your students know what they mean, they've attached them to context, and they will never forget them because of it. That's the magic of proficiency. That's how all of acquisition, well, we shouldn't say all, that's a big blanket statement, but that's how a lot of acquisition works. When you say something in a specific context, like, Jeremy, go shut the door, they're going to remember it like, oh, that's a command, they're going to remember the word for door, they're going to remember shut, they're going to remember that, and they'll be able to use it themselves. So classroom survival phrases, because there's so much good high-frequency content in there, plus commands are a really important way of interacting with other people, you know, giving suggestions and sharing opinions as well as like asking people to do things, that's a really essential piece of communication. So classroom survival phrases. Related to that, no need to explain this here, target language survival phrases for your classroom setting. So whatever they need to get around the room and still use as much target language as possible. Think deeply about this because there are so many missed opportunities in a classroom for you to have repetitive, awesome target language use. So many teachers are wondering, how can I add more target language to my class? Well, what are your students asking for every day? Where is this? Can I do this? Can I use this? Teach the phrase where it is. Teach the phrase, can I, as a rejoinder, or like, keep it on the board somewhere. Those important phrases that your students are asking for all the time are like, I need help, I need help. Oh my gosh, those are such valuable ways for your students to stay in the target language. And I know I used to do this all the time. When I was still in the classroom, I would miss all these great opportunities and let that language seep through the cracks when my students could have been using it all the time. I finally picked up on it in my last two years of teaching. So don't make the same mistake as me. Make sure that those beautiful moments where your students are saying the same things over and over again, they're in the target language. Question words, also related. Questions are the bread and butter of language at the novice level. They don't need to know how to form questions until later on in their journey, and it's not really appropriate anyways until novice high. However, question words, oh my God, they're going to need that from you. So keep question words like most teachers do. Keep question words high, large, and visible in your classroom at all times, because that's going to be really powerful for you. Something that will help you out a lot too, this is a must do, is any kind of basic rejoinders to participate at a very basic level in your class, as well as give them some stuff to react to things, but just one or two phrases is enough. What is a rejoinder? A rejoinder is a lovely, built-in, easily pluggable phrase that is a common way to react to something in a conversation or keep the conversation going. It's that stuff like, no me digas, or que asco, like ew, that's gross, or oh my gosh, tell me more. Or it can also be things like, no me importa, I don't care about that. So things that your students would say all the time in conversation or ways that they can express how they're feeling, great rejoinders. You don't need to teach them all of them, but it's a great idea to have some in your back pocket. This is also something that we often forget about, but I would love to see more of this in our activities and curriculums, is nonverbal body language communication strategies. So how can you help them get meaning across with big eyebrows, with pointing, with not using their words, with anything to stay in the target language. Same thing here is how can you put them in as many situations as possible where the discomfort of not being understood or not understanding doesn't feel so unfamiliar anymore. It's a common occurrence in your class where students are like, I don't understand what that is, or I don't know how to say that. And they're cool with it because they've done it so often. I would also say too that a must-do, a must-do, a must-do is this emerging awareness that there are multiple ways to express being a human in the world. We do that through language and culture, like that's the whole point of world language, right? So this is a must-do. We do this in various ways depending on our styles. Some people like to do these big culture deep dives, me, and some people like to sprinkle in culture in like everyday little ways. However you like to do it, make sure that this is a big focus of your class. Also, everybody's doing this, but let's just make sure that you're getting credit for what you're doing. Basic introductions, of course, because you can't start a conversation without those. Greetings, leave takings, and the classic year one staple, preferences, likes and dislikes. Your students cannot graduate into novice high unless they are able to express an opinion. They don't need details, but they do need to be able to confidently express things that they like, don't like, or, you know, it's difficult, it's boring, it's fun, it's easy. They should be able to do that. Another must-do is school vocabulary, anything that has to do with the school. You can go as heavy into school as you want or just keep it simple surface level with school subjects and their favorite teachers and things like that, but, oh yeah, you need to get way deep into school real quick, like as soon as you can in the beginning of their first year of language. Also, this is the year of adjectives. Description is the first major novice skill, so as much work as you can do with adjectives, the better. Now, the focus is on using adjectives, not understanding how adjectives work or their placement in the sentence. They will get that naturally by seeing examples in context, so don't worry about that. I would also say, too, that a really important piece of level one, if you have room for it, is what are some basic foods that students interact with every day? You don't need to actually do a full-blown food unit, but they do need the basic foods that they interact with every day because, I mean, novices are concerned with their habits, what they do every day, the things they interact with every day, and what's more every day than food. Also, this is one of the most forgotten things in curriculum. I almost always have to add this back into a curriculum or remind people of this one. Wants and needs. Wants and needs are a key staple of being a novice high learner, being able to express your wants and your needs. So if you don't have anything in your year one that talks about, I want this, I don't want this, I need this. Can I get this? If you don't have any practice for them to express things that they want and express things they like and get things that they need, they're not novice high yet. That is the most important thing that they need to be able to do. Think of it as the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. We need to do that first level, right? Like food, water, shelter, and all of the basic essentials of being comfortable during the day. They need to be able to get that in the language. So they need that in, they need to be able to get those and ask for those things in an interpersonal setting for them to be novice high. It won't be cute, it won't be pretty, but they should be able to, you know, look at somebody with eyebrows and be like, bathroom, water, I'm cold. Like they don't need to be able to say, give me a jacket or can I buy a jacket? They'll just say things like, I'm cold. And do you have, like, that's what we're talking about here. So that's the bare minimum for what your students should be doing. This is also a fun one, is, and I'm sure you're already doing this in class when you're asking them every day, like, hi, students, how are you with the basic greeting? So go ahead and give yourself a nice little check that your students can express a simple, pretty, formulaic emotion. As long as they can express some sort of emotion, you're doing good. This one will need a little bit of tweaking, although most people do have this in their year one curriculum, and that is basic simple description. It doesn't matter what facet of description that you do. You could focus more on physical traits. You could omit that if you don't really like that, and you can just do personality or things that they like to do, that's fine. But as long as they can describe themselves in very simple terms, physically, or their personality, or things that they like to do, they should be able to do that. They should be able to say simple things like, hi, my name's Devin, I have blonde-ish hair, and I have blue eyes. Or, you know, I'm creative, and I'm colorful, and I'm funny. They should be able to say things like that. They should also be able to do the same thing with an object. So if you give them an object, they should be able to say, like, this is a pen, it's black, it's my favorite pen. They should be able to give you, like, three simple descriptions about any random object that you give them. Even if they don't know what the word is, like, if you give them something totally random, like something like this, like a cord, they should be able to say, that is long, that is white, that is, I don't know, important, or, like, it is technology. They might not know the word for cord, but they should be able to describe it. Also, of course, high-frequency words. You need those, you need those, you need those. I would stick with the verbs, too, and use those really, really helpful lists that are out there in the world, like the Super 7, Sweet 16. I do personally like to expand on those just a little bit for certain languages because there are some differences between Spanish and French for which are the more high-frequency areas of language and phrases that are used. However, it is good to have in your mind, like, oh, these are the key seven that you need for every single language. But trust your gut that there's probably one or two more or less phrases in your specific target language that your students may need more. Okay, so we've got level one. How exciting is that? Let's dive into level two. With level two, here are your must-dos. This is assuming that you've already covered, covered is a terrible word in curriculum, let me say something like, a better word for this would be, these are the topics that you've already dove into that your students understand, you know, wonderful, great, they're doing wonderful. These are the must-dos in level two. Once the area's in level one, you feel like they're pretty mastered or at least you've touched on them in some way. So for level two or year two, depends on where you're at, these will be learners that are in the novice-mid to novice-high range, you know, somewhere between them. And no class is ever going to be uniformly like, oh, all these kids are novice-high or all of them are novice-mid. It's never going to happen. So you're going to have a mix anyways. Must-do for level two is this. This is where you're starting to get them into novice-high territory. So, their community. They need to be able to describe and list important members of their own community. Family, but more in depth. Clothing and weather, because this is, of course, simple, everyday things that they should be able to have in their back pocket with conversations, because what do people talk about the most when they're having a conversation? They talk about themselves, their family, their friends, what their friends are like. We did that in level one. And then they start talking about, you know, those everyday things. Food, clothing, what they want to do, where they want to go, why they can or cannot do it, because of weather, because they're busy, because of obligations. So, those are the topics that you're covering in level two. Again, not covering, but those are the topics that you're exploring in level two. You can't cover things in language. You explore them. So, let's talk more about, well, how do you get into those? Because those are more of the thematic topics, right? Those feel a lot more like vocabulary. Here are some other areas that would be great for you to add to their toolkit for novice high. Do some simple past tense. And when I mean simple, what I like to do with past tense when I'm recommending past tense content for curriculum clients is do just first and second person. Just those two. So, just je and tu, because that's the essential piece of the conversation, is the back and forth between I and you. You don't really need the rest until you get later on when they're reading more. And they'll pick up past tense when they're reading through the third person. There's so much third person reading. You really don't need to teach it in level two. They will pick it up if you give them enough reading. I would also say, too, that they need a simple shopping exchange. So, if you don't have much interpersonal content in your units yet, that means do you have opportunities for them to talk to other people or sign with other people where they need to have information from somebody else to complete the task. You need a lot of that in level two, because they will not truly be novice high until they can achieve certain communicative goals in interpersonal. You need to be able to check off, oh, yeah, they can handle a simple shopping exchange. Oh, yeah, they can get things that they need if they're cold, tired, hungry, or thirsty. Oh, yeah, they can move around a town square if they've never been there before and find the stuff that they want, buy something, and go get some food. That's how you know they're novice high. With that in mind, it's a good idea in this level to start doing let's compare and contrast. Comparing and contrasting is a very important skill in novice high. It's just emerging. They're just starting to do it, so it won't be anything complex like, you know, full Venn diagram style, but you will see that students will be ready to talk about I have this in common or I don't have this in common with somebody. Big part, don't leave home without it for level two is routines and sequence. So anything that helps with routine will help them, which means that's where you're going to see a lot of variability in curriculums that you're shopping for, curriculums that you're using, where you'll see things in level two like there might be a chore unit or a house unit or, you know, what I do every day or how I get ready in the morning. Here's a secret. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter which one you do. What matters is that you're teaching students how to talk about their own routines in sequence because that is the key skill that we're going for. So you can do anything you want. You could focus on just the day routine and have students try their best to be able to express that. Or you could talk about like when you go on a trip, how is your routine different and include that compare and contrast. Or you could do chores and expectations at home. Or you could do jobs and you could teach them jobs and the things that they have to do routinely in their jobs. You could even do this in a school setting. Again, it doesn't matter as long as routines and sequence are a part of it. Another way that you can do this is prepositions, locations and objects, how they're related to each other. So crucial, so important. With this in mind, doing prepositions is so hard for language learners and those who are acquiring language, I should say. Prepositions are very difficult and they will be difficult every single year. So what we recommend, those of us in the curriculum world, is start with prepositions early and teach the most essential ones and just expect that you're going to need to revisit prepositions every single year. It's normal because even in the advanced levels, people mix up prepositions and use the wrong ones. Even people who have lived in a different country that speaks another language than their own, who are L2 learners, even if they've lived there for 10 years, they mix up prepositions sometimes because, duh, prepositions make absolutely no sense and do not translate the same way at all between languages. Plus, you can have a word like of or in that, oh my God, means so many different things. So it's OK. Just keep on trucking. Here is more of a skill to be doing must do's, and that is give more opportunities for lengthy, more connected discourse. That means in level one or in year one, you might have been doing, you know, like one or two questions back and forth. Now you want to see three, maybe even four. So if they're working with a partner, maybe they can go back and forth like three times maybe. That would be really, really exciting. You will also see in their writing, they should have connected paragraphs and transitions, some organization as well. They should also have some transition and sequence words. So beginning understanding of how to do sequence whenever they're doing writing or whenever they're in a presentational setting and doing speaking, they should be pretty comfortable with using super simple transition words that you've taught them. They will also start to need an expanded present tense and a beginner past tense repertoire, which means in year two, let's make sure that they're very comfortable talking about the immediate things happening around them and maybe something that just happened to them or something that will happen to them. Very, very simple. The bubble does not need to be full understanding of these concepts. We're not doing all six to eight subject pronouns, depending on what language you teach. We're saying just simply that your students can comfortably by level two, the end of it, do something like this. Yesterday I went to the store. Today I will go to the store again. Something very, very simple like that. And oh boy, if you have reflexives in your language, now is the time. Dive in, dive in, dive in, dive in. Now for levels one and level two, I'm going to leave you off with this thought for these are things that could happen anytime in these two years. These are everyday thematic topics. You could have them happen in years one and year two, and they would work great. You've already heard some of these things in here. So this will be a nice review and a nice way to close out this episode. First things first, house, doesn't matter when you do it. It just needs to happen. Students need to be comfortable talking about where they live because what's more everyday than where they spend all their time, right? Chores, anytime, doesn't matter as long as it happens. Daily routine, that can happen anytime as well. Also, this needs to happen, but it can happen at any time and you can do it at any level of depth that you want to. Sports, activities, music and hobbies. And do not misunderstand here. I'm talking about the ability for students to express what are their favorite sports. What are the hobbies they like? What are the hobbies that they see in the target culture that they are interested in and what are the hobbies they see in the target culture that they think are really boring, not listing off a hundred activities that is useless information. What they need to be able to do in a sports and activities area is something like, Oh, I love playing the flute. It's so cool that in Peru, there's also lots of flute. That's what they need to be able to do. Also, I like soccer. That's cool that people in Peru also like soccer. That's what they should be able to do. It doesn't need to be in Peru. People like these 15 things. Like that's not what we're looking for here. Oh, the dreaded numbers. You might love teaching numbers. I did not love teaching numbers. And if you can get away with it, I would suggest you cut numbers from your program and you just let it happen in the everyday interactions that you have. As long as your students are pretty comfortable with, you know, like one through 20, but you know, numbers, yeah, we need to do it. They need that for pricing. That's very important when they're in target language settings. Also though, I will say as a, as a nice little asterisk star, I'm like doing the real thing in here if you're watching the video that if you are in an elementary program, absolutely do numbers and do numbers all day long. It's such a great way to engage your students and they will be very good at it. Also, speaking of elementary programs, animals in nature, animals in nature can happen at any time during your program in the early years. So some people really love to deep dive and do a whole animals daily. And they use that to learn how to describe objects and things. Great. Or you can do nature and do the same thing. But again, it doesn't matter how you're exploring this lens. As long as students are able to describe things in nature and describe the animals around them or the animals in their everyday lives. Another important thematic topic that will work really, really well in any part of the first two years of a language program is food in all of its different forms. Because I mean, why wouldn't you? I have yet to see a program that doesn't do a really awesome thing on food. Right. It's a great.