What I'm Looking For in an Elementary Spanish Course Content Guides (Textbooks)

I regularly get emails / calls from textbook reps that want to help me find the best possible resources for my classes, which is great!

Unfortunately, I am very picky. Largely, this is due to the fact that my area of expertise is Second Language Acquisition (SLA), and specifically technology-enhanced SLA. Additionally, I have invested significant amounts of time and effort into the creation of my own online resources for the classes I teach, and I'm reluctant to switch over to a new Course Content Guide for minor reasons. I am going to use the term Course Content Guide (CCG) as synonymous with the term "textbook". I do so because I am quite open to the idea of not using an actual book. I'd be quite happy to have an online resource that provided me with the needed structure.

The truth is, I barely use the resources provided in the textbook we currently use. I base my classes on the content from the textbook, but I usually just use my own activities. And this blog post is my attempt to explain why. In other words, here is my wish list for a CCG for my elementary Spanish courses.

But first, here is a list of my theoretical leanings:

1. Flipped-Classroom - I like to use a Flipped-Classroom approach. This is where students are introduced to the material at home before class, and then practice the material in class.

2. Small Group Work - In class, I predominantly have the students working in small groups of 3 - 4 students. (See my blog post about my gamified approach to group work.)

3. Replay Value - I like to provide my students with browser-based tools that provide them with randomly generated content for rote practice (drills). Yes, I know that "drills" is a buzz word. But students desire this type of practice. So, if they're going to do it, I want to give them the option to do it in the most effective way possible, and the option to do it with my content, rather than the content from some random website. And with an unlimited supply of new content. (See my game Español Al Azar for an example of what I mean.)

4. Task-Based Language Teaching - In class, I like to have students engaged in communicative tasks with easily measurable, non-linguistic objectives that they accomplish by using the target content in the target language. For example, I want them to summarize the plot of a movie so that their peers can guess what movie it is. I do not want them just writing a list of sentences with a specific verb conjugation.

5. The Four Skills - In every class, I want students to engage in at least one reading/writing task and one speaking/listening task. The tasks need to be as natural as possible (i.e. "repeat after me" does not count.)

6. Communicative Language Teaching - I want the tasks done in class to be communicative. Really communicative, not pretend communicative. I want the students to be involved in the transmission of messages in Spanish. And the messages need to have a point! And the point needs to be important to the students.

7. Hierarchy of Tasks - I would very much prefer a course set up with a hierarchical structure for the lessons. This means that in a unit, you have a big task to complete. Something the students know that they are working towards, and know when they have completed it (e.g. preparing a presentation to the class on their family.) Each unit will have several lessons. Each lesson should involve the students performing smaller tasks that will help them develop the skills they need for the unit task. In our example, one lesson could be describing a famous person so the rest of the class can guess who it is, one could be listing the biggest occupations in a city of their choice, one could be giving a presentation to the class on healthy vs. unhealthy pastimes, one could be completing a family tree, etc. Each of these is a measurable, communicative task that students know when they have finished it. And each task helps them acquire the skills needed for the unit task. Each of these lesson tasks could in turn be supported by simpler, input-based, activities. For example, for the family tree lesson task, students could play a game where they are given sentences such as (my brother's daughter is my _____) which they complete with the correct term.

8. Gameful L2TL - I am a firm believer that games and gamification can be used to improve almost every teaching/learning situation.

9. Take Advantage of Technology - "Any teacher who can be replaced by a machine should be" - Arthur C. Clarke. We have computers that can help with drills and many other things. Anything that a computer can do better than a human should be done by a computer, that way the human teachers can do stuff the computers can't. Such as directing small group conversations. Not everything can be done by a computer, but a lot can. And often they can do it better! For example, computers can be programmed to have fun, engaging communicative drills that provide students with feedback 100% of the time. Whereas this would be logistically impossible for an educator to do for each student / group.

So, what do I want?

I want a CCG that provides me with:

1. Several units per semester. Each unit having a culminating task the students complete. Preferably with editable, easy-to-use rubrics.
2. Several lessons per unit. Each lesson having a culminating task the students complete. Each lesson should also prepare the students for the unit task. Ideally, each lesson should be set up to take around 40 - 50 minutes.
3. An editable small slideshow for each lesson that quickly provides enhanced input for the learners to refresh on what they read for that lesson.
4. At least one good reading/writing and one good speaking/listening task per lesson. (Preferably a couple of each, and preferably the prompts are provided in the slideshow.)
5. Online communicative drills in the form of engaging digital games. Ideally, there would be a way for students to click a button in order for the game to report student participation to the instructor.
6. Simple examples and explanations for the students to read / watch / play at home before class so that they can have a basic understanding of the content they will be covering in class. Additionally, there should be some simple comprehension checks that they can complete, which can be reported to the instructor.

Finally, if you really want to impress me, provide me with a platform that can also do the following:

1. Allow me to integrate my Unity WebGL games into your website so that they can played in the browser and have the data recorded to your site.
2. Provide me with a gradecenter with the type of functionality described here.
3. Make it all reasonably priced (read: dirt cheap / free.)

4. I am really interested in a user-friendly API for Google Sheets.

So, if you think you have a CCG that I would be interested in, I'm all ears! Please comment below and/or send me an email! I would love to stop working on the one I'm developing and use yours!

Best,