Unit 6 — ¿Cómo es tu escuela? (Tell me about your school)
Description
In this unit for grades 6-8, students describe their school, classes, teachers, and daily schedules. Students learn vocabulary for school subjects, classroom objects, times, and school-related activities. The unit compares and contrasts American schools with schools in Spanish-speaking countries, examining differences in schedule length, school calendars, course offerings, and language education. Students discover that Spanish-speaking students learn some of the same information as American students but often have more specialized and globally focused classes. Students also explore how different countries treat language learning differently, typically viewing English as a core subject while a second or third language is customarily learned by secondary school. The unit addresses how socio-economic and cultural factors affect school experiences and supplies availability across different countries.
Essential Questions
- Do Spanish-speaking students learn the same information as I do and what is different and what is the same?
- How does their school day differ from mine in terms of schedule, courses, and meals?
- How is a course in a second language treated in elementary, middle, or high school schedules in other countries compared to how English is treated as a second language in typical schedules worldwide?
- What supplies are needed to be successful in school and are they different between countries?
Learning Objectives
- Name and describe school subjects using target vocabulary
- Tell time and describe daily schedules using appropriate expressions
- Describe teachers, classrooms, and school objects
- Express likes and dislikes about school, classes, and subjects
- Ask and answer questions about school experiences
- Compare school systems, schedules, and curricula across countries
- Understand cultural perspectives on language learning and education
- Recognize how socio-economic factors affect educational experiences
Supplemental Resources
- Sentence strips with vocabulary for constructing practice sentences
- Index cards with situation prompts for interviews and conversations
- Printed images or photographs of Spanish-speaking classrooms and schools
Interpersonal Mode
Interpretive Mode
Presentational Mode
Students engage in writing and reading activities across all units, including writing descriptions, creating narratives, reading authentic passages, and expressing ideas through written communication in Spanish and English.
Students explore Spanish-speaking countries, their cultures, customs, families, schools, and lifestyles. Learning includes geographic awareness, cultural practices, and understanding diverse perspectives from target language communities.
Students create posters, presentations, skits, songs, and visual projects. They engage in dramatization, creative expression, and perform cultural activities that integrate music and performance.
Students examine climate change, environmental awareness, and recycling practices in Spanish-speaking communities. Topics include weather, animals, natural resources, and geography-related concepts.
Students use mathematics in practical contexts including time telling, ordinal numbers, counting, measuring, creating floor plans with scale, and interpreting quantitative data.
Students utilize digital tools and applications including Flipgrid, Edpuzzle, Duolingo, Quizlet, Google Tools, YouTube, and other web-based platforms for language learning, research, and project creation.
Formative Assessments
- Interviews with partners about preferred and disliked classes
- Listening activities identifying school objects and subjects from descriptions
- Reading passages about school systems with comprehension questions
- Card activities where students match objects or people to descriptions
- Written schedules with descriptions of classes and preferences
- Role-play activities asking and answering questions about school
Summative Assessment
Assessment transfer task requiring students to research typical school days in Spanish-speaking countries and create schedules, create school supply lists describing items and quantities, interview partners about class preferences, construct Spanish sentences from word strips based on oral prompts, present personal schedules to the class, and complete various interpretive and presentational activities
Benchmark Assessment
A short task in which students listen to descriptions of school subjects and classroom objects, then identify and label them on a visual chart or worksheet. Students also respond orally or in writing to simple prompts about their own schedule using time expressions and school vocabulary covered in the unit.
Alternative Assessment
Students may demonstrate understanding through oral descriptions of school subjects and daily schedules with visual supports such as picture cards, word banks, or a completed schedule template to reference. Response length and complexity may be reduced while maintaining focus on key vocabulary and time expressions.
IEP (Individualized Education Program)
Students may benefit from visual supports such as illustrated vocabulary banks for school subjects, classroom objects, and time expressions to reduce cognitive load during both receptive and productive tasks. For output, allow flexibility in how students demonstrate understanding — oral responses, labeled drawings, or dictated sentences may be more appropriate than extended written work, particularly during schedule descriptions and preference expressions. Breaking multi-step tasks, such as constructing sentences from word strips or preparing a personal schedule presentation, into smaller sequenced steps with teacher check-ins will help students build toward the full task with confidence. Providing graphic organizers that scaffold the comparison of school systems can support comprehension of the cultural content without reducing the rigor of the learning objectives.
Section 504
Students should be given extended time for listening activities, reading passages about school systems, and any written components of the summative task to ensure access is not limited by processing pace. Preferential seating near the instructor during oral modeling of time expressions and school vocabulary can support focus and auditory processing. Printed copies of any schedules, directions, or word strips displayed on the board should be provided directly to the student to minimize visual tracking demands during class activities.
ELL / MLL
Given that this unit blends Spanish language acquisition with culturally rich content about education across countries, MLLs may connect meaningfully to school experiences in their own home countries — teachers should create space for those connections as a bridge to new vocabulary and concepts. Visual supports such as labeled images of school subjects, classroom objects, and sample daily schedules will help students access the content vocabulary before engaging in conversational or written tasks. Simplified oral directions, paired with a brief restatement or check for understanding, will help MLLs navigate multi-part activities like partner interviews and card-matching tasks. When possible, allowing students to reference vocabulary in their home language alongside Spanish can support meaning-making during reading and listening activities.
At Risk (RTI)
Connecting unit vocabulary to students' own school day — subjects they are currently taking, objects in their own classroom, and their existing schedule — provides a familiar entry point into the content before moving into comparison with Spanish-speaking schools. Reducing the number of vocabulary items introduced at one time and prioritizing the most frequently needed terms for school subjects, time-telling, and basic preferences will help students build a functional working set before expanding. Sentence frames and partially completed written schedules can lower the barrier to participation in productive tasks while keeping students engaged with grade-level concepts. Frequent, low-stakes formative check-ins, such as thumbs-up responses during listening activities or one-sentence exit responses, help identify where additional reinforcement is needed.
Gifted & Talented
Students who demonstrate early mastery of school vocabulary and schedule descriptions can be invited to explore the socio-economic and cultural dimensions of this unit at a deeper level, such as researching how resource inequity affects school supply availability or language program access across specific Spanish-speaking countries. Rather than simply creating a schedule, these students might analyze and evaluate structural differences between school systems, constructing an argument in Spanish about what aspects of another country's educational model might benefit American schools. Encouraging students to experiment with more complex sentence structures — such as expressing nuanced opinions about subjects or incorporating subordinate clauses into their schedule presentations — pushes linguistic development beyond the core objectives. Opportunities for independent inquiry, such as independently sourcing authentic Spanish-language school materials or student accounts, can enrich the cultural comparison component of the unit.