Unit 6 — ¿Cómo es tu escuela? (Tell me about your school)

• Vocabulary matching with school-related images
• Partner interviews about class preferences
• Guided listening with schedule and class descriptions
• Schedule interpretation and creation activities
• Written descriptions of school with feedback

Research typical school day in Spanish-speaking country and create schedule comparison; create school supply list with descriptions and quantities; interview partner about class preferences; present schedule to class describing preferred and disliked subjects

A short task requiring students to identify school subjects and classroom objects from images, tell time using a clock face, and write or verbally describe one class using at least two adjectives. This measures mastery of vocabulary, time-telling, and descriptive language covered in Unit 6.

Students may demonstrate understanding through a verbal description of their school and classes with visual supports such as labeled pictures of classroom objects and school subjects. A teacher-led conversation or recorded audio response may substitute for written work, with sentence frames provided as needed.

For this unit's focus on vocabulary acquisition and oral language production, students may benefit from visual word banks pairing Spanish school-subject terms with images to support recall during speaking and writing tasks. Providing sentence frames for describing teachers, expressing preferences, and discussing schedules will reduce cognitive load while still allowing students to demonstrate understanding. Output flexibility is important here — students who find extended writing challenging may respond orally, use dictation, or point to visual schedule representations rather than producing written descriptions independently. When comparing school systems across cultures, pre-organized graphic organizers with key categories already labeled can help students focus on the content rather than the structure of their response.

Students in this unit benefit most from extended time during vocabulary-based tasks and schedule interpretation activities, where processing demands are layered across reading, listening, and responding in Spanish. Preferential seating near the teacher during guided listening activities involving time-telling and class descriptions can help reduce distraction and support audio processing. Providing a printed copy of any schedule-related visuals displayed digitally or on the board ensures consistent access to reference material during partner interviews and comparison tasks.

Because this unit introduces a dense set of content-specific vocabulary — school subjects, classroom objects, personnel, and schedule language — providing illustrated vocabulary resources in both Spanish and the student's home language, where possible, will build meaningful connections to the new terms. Visual schedule models from Spanish-speaking school systems can make the cultural comparison more concrete and accessible without relying heavily on text. Simplified verbal directions for partner interview tasks, paired with a modeled example, help MLL students understand what is expected before they attempt to produce language independently. Connecting school-related vocabulary to objects and routines the student already knows from their own schooling experience provides a strong entry point into the unit.

Students who need additional support entering this unit will benefit from beginning with the most high-frequency, familiar vocabulary — subjects they already take and classroom objects they use daily — before extending to schedule language and cultural comparison. Chunking the summative task into smaller, clearly sequenced steps (such as first building the vocabulary list, then practicing time expressions, then drafting a schedule) helps make the overall expectation feel manageable. Partner interviews can be scaffolded with sentence starters so students can participate meaningfully in speaking tasks even if their independent production is still developing. Connecting the cultural comparison component to students' own school experiences activates prior knowledge and gives them a concrete foundation for understanding differences.

Students who have quickly internalized the unit's core vocabulary and schedule structures can be invited to go deeper into the cultural and socioeconomic dimensions of schooling in Spanish-speaking countries, moving beyond surface-level comparison to analyze how factors such as resource access, language policy, or regional variation shape educational experiences. Rather than simply describing a school schedule, these students might explore how subject offerings, school-day length, or attitudes toward foreign language learning differ across specific countries or economic contexts and consider what those differences reveal. Encouraging more nuanced use of descriptive and evaluative language in Spanish — going beyond basic adjectives to express reasoned opinions and qualified comparisons — extends both linguistic and critical thinking development. Independent research using authentic sources, such as school websites or youth-facing informational content from Spanish-speaking countries, can provide appropriately advanced material.