Subject: Spanish
Level: Curriculum Levels 1-2 and 3-4
Unit title: El apartamento (The Apartment)
Authors: Gunhild Litwin (comments) Beverly Hurtado
(author)
Email address: g.litwin@massey.ac.nz
All Curriculum Support Days resources reflect the work of subject specialists during a twoday forum. You should view them as ‘work-in- progress’, not as finished units to download and use. They demonstrate a range of ways of thinking about how you might build the ‘front end’ of the NZ Curriculum (the
Vision, Principles, Values, Key Competencies, Effective Pedagogies and
Learning Area Statements) into your existing units of work, by re-focusing how you teach rather than changing what you teach. The questions and comments recorded in the body of each resource are at least as important as the unit itself. If for some reason your software does not display such questions and comments, it is likely that you need to make some technical adjustment to how you are viewing the resource.
It exemplifies a unit of work at the heart of the NZC Learning Languages Essence statement: “Learning a new language provides a means of communicating with people from another culture and exploring one’s own personal world. … Learning a new language extends students’ linguistic and cultural understanding and their ability to interact appropriately with other speakers.”
The unit
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Focuses on authentic exploration of cultural artefacts (housing) as well as linguistic conventions (e.g. the need to use formal titles and language forms with older persons) within its setting.
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Can be adapted and used with “Sí” from the Learning Languages series, any beginning Spanish textbook and taught with teacher-created resources.
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Is task-based ; the need to communicate in Spanish is embedded within each task.
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Explicitly addresses the Key Competencies: o Thinking – e.g. creative use of Spanish and applying it to communicate o Using language, symbols and texts
– e.g. learning to use new language a nd experimenting with different forms of text types (speaking, reading….) to express their thoughts o Managing self - enabling students to become capable learners and evaluators of their own learning o Relating to others – by using Spanish, students interact within the class and with the wider Spanish-speaking world

o Participating and contributing – the unit involves students with their learning as a member of a group. It is only through students’ contributions to the different tasks that the learning of new Spanish becomes meaningful .
(In the body of the unit, the relevant KCs will be inserted as they apply to aspects of the unit)
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Enables a high degree of student input into decisions about the content and context of the leaning. Students “… discover new ways of learning, new ways of knowing, and more about their own capabilities.” (NZC, Learning Languages
Essence Statement)
For teaching ideas which support aspects of this unit, view the Learning Languages support materials on TKI: http://secondary.tki.org.nz/learning_languages/spanish/levels_1_and_2 http://secondary.tki.org.nz/learning_languages/spanish/levels_3_and_4
The current unit:
El Apartamento
The Big Idea:
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We learn Spanish because we want to communicate and interact with people from Spanish-speaking cultures. (Key Competencies: Relating to others/
Participating and contributing)
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We want to understand others when they communicate in Spanish about personal information and their opinions. (Key Competencies: Relating to others/
Participating and contributing)

We want to experience a variety of ways to learn and practise Spanish language and a variety of ways of expressing what we learnt. (Key Competencies:
Thinking/ Managing self)
YEAR 9 OR 10 SPANISH
This unit of work can take one term, two terms or a whole year. It allows for students with a variety of levels of previous learning, or none at all. This work is excellent for communication skills and cultural knowledge.
Key Competencies: Using Language, Managing Self, Relating to Others,
Participating and Contributing
Task for Students:
‘Move to a Spanish-Speaking Country and set up an apartment ’
(I do Lima
– Peru). Take on a new name, age, nationality etc
UNITS OF WORK:
1. The Apartment
Make a large cardboard apartment building to stick on the wall. It can be many floors. Have empty windows where the students can insert drawings of themselves

once they establish who owns which apartment. Some apartments can be single, doubles or triples. Students choose who they flat with. Some students have chosen a cardboard box on the street outside! Or a tent on the roof!
Where is the apartment? In the centre of the city, on the coast, next to a park....
What is it like? How many floors? What’s it made of?
What does it have? Lift, pool, a mysterious basement, a roof garden, a wall of graffiti that students can make...
2. Introductions
Students choose a new name or make their own name Spanish. Look at Spanish names with double surnames, make up nicknames, introduce themselves, introduce their friends to each other
Students choose an age - anything from 18 to 99
Students choose a job...we have had 45 year old jugglers, dance teachers, interior designers, unemployed vagabonds, Russian spies, clowns, English teachers.........
Students choose a nationality. Spanish speaking countries, French, Italian,
Englishman John Brown who doesn’t speak Spanish (yet!)...no hablo español!!
Students talk about the languages they speak...Spanish, French, Italian, English
Students describe what they look like.
Hair, size, personality, clothes. Play ¿Quién es? Make descriptions and guess who it is........
Students talk about their families – tengo doce hermanas, descriptions, character, jobs, ethnicity
3. My Apartment
Students decorate their apartments
Design their rooms, furniture, colours, accessories
Where is it? What floor? (ordinal numbers) What city? What address?
Make a washing line, cut out and label clothes to hang on it.
Who has a car? How do you get to work?
4. La fiesta
Plan a party for a particular celebration, Easter, Day of the Dead etc
What are you going to wear?
What food are you going to take?
How are you going to celebrate?
What date is the party? What time? Who is coming? Write invitations and replies.
5. El restaurante
You have a favourite restaurant nearby.
What kind of food? English, Mexican, Peruvian, Chinese.
Make a menu
Role play
Invite others from the apartment to your restaurant.
Diagnostic
6. Shopping
What shops are near the apartment?
What can you buy?
What does it cost?

Students can study a shop, label the things in that particular shop and present it to the class. Bakers, clothes shops, shoes shops, bookshops, market. Auction game.
7. Holidays
Send students off on holiday to various tourist sites in that country – Cusco, Inca trail, Lake Titicaca, Amazon Jungle, Atacama desert... This needs a little research
Students send postcards back to the apartment.
Where are they? What are they doing? What is it like? What is the weather like?
Students can prepare a neat poster about their holiday destination and report back to the class.
8. El fin de semana
What activities do the students do in the weekend? Sky dive, cycling, play volleyball, sit around and watch movies, go out dancing, shop...
What do they do in summer, winter...?
What do they wear for that activity?
What kind of music do they listen to?
What kind of movies do they watch?
What kind of books do they read?
9. Christmas
Organise a Christmas party
What food will you prepare?
What gifts do you buy and for who?
How will you decorate your apartment?
How will you celebrate?
This unit generally creates a real buzz with students that last for years!
Activities are only limited by the imagination.
Study a little history about the country or city you are in.
What famous people come from there?
What music do they listen to? What are their favourite dishes? Cook them!
What transport do they use? Look up real bus timetables, train stations etc
Organise quiz days, students make up questions in target language. Who is
55 years old and comes from Russia? Who went to the jungle for a holiday?...
Find mysterious notes with pieces missing. Who wrote it? etc, etc…….
El Apartamento
The below shows modifications to the planning of two sub-units of the greater year plan: el restaurante and shopping . Rather than suggesting a teaching sequence, I have focussed on developing big picture ideas for specific teaching approaches. This year unit lends itself to differentiated approaches and I wanted to highlight ways to incorporate prior learning and outcomes for student learning.
5. El restaurante

You have a favourite restaurant nearby.
What kind of food? English, Mexican, Peruvian, Chinese.
Make a menu
Role play
Invite others from the apartment to your restaurant.
6. Shopping
What shops are near the apartment?
What can you buy?
What does it cost?
Students can study a shop, label the things in that particular shop and present it to the class. Bakers, clothes shops, shoes shops, bookshops, market.
Auction game.
Y 7/8/9 Spanish Duration: 5 weeks
Big ideas:

We want to understand others when they communicate about food: new vocabulary,
Learning area links
Essence statement
Learning a new language extends students’ linguistic general eating/cooking/shopping habits and/or customs. (Key competencies: Using language, symbols and texts/ Relating to others/ and cultural understanding and their ability to interact appropriately with other speakers.
Participating and contributing)

We want to use Spanish when we communicate about foods likes/dislikes, polite language of
Level 1&2: Proficiency
Descriptor ordering food and in general food related conversations. (Key competencies: Using language, symbols and texts/ Participating and
Understand and use familiar expressions and everyday vocabulary contributing/ Relating to others)
THE BIG IDEA DETERMINES THE DIRECTION OF
THE LEARNING AND TEACHING YET TO COME
Interact in a simple way in supported situations
Success Criteria:
I will be able to:
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Understand texts to do with food in general and authentic texts like menus, supermarket flyers
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Communicate about likes/dislikes regarding foods
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Order food in a restaurant using polite Spanish
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Present information about food (my own preferences///similarities or differences on foods/customs between NZ and Peru/// …???) in writing or spoken
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Hold a shopping conversation
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Compare Peruvian and New Zealand customs and habits with foods
Fore-grounded Key Competency: Using language, symbols and texts
Proficiency statement for CL
1&2
Prior learning:

formulaic exchanges about personal information

basic vocabulary (quantities, descriptions, verbs/nouns)
Students can understand and use familiar expressions and everyday vocabulary. Students can interact in a simple way in supported situations.


basic research-based understanding about housing in Peru
New learning:
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exploring/acquiring language around the functions of shopping for food and going out/inviting friends
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researching, comparing and presenting differences and similarities around foodrelated customs and language
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using the new language to describe, question and interact verbally and through written texts
Minor focus: Participating and contributing
Students participate actively in interactions and understand that it is through use of new and learnt language that making meaning of the new language is facilitated and expanded.
Level 1&2 AOs
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Receive/produce information
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Produce/ respond to q&a
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Show social awareness in interactions
Values:
Community and participation for the common good
Excellence, by aiming high and by persevering
Fore-grounded Principles:
High expectations – engaging students and challenging them to achieve at their highest level
Concepts: energy transformations, energy sources
Learning to learn: enable students to use research, revision, and reflection skills to provide them with ways to become users of Spanish for communication and uses, global warming, energy conservation
Learning Activities:
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listening to/reading new language
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brainstorm/ graphic organiser/ think, pair, share activities
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preparing and conducting role plays
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inter-cultural exploration via websites (You Tube etc)
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language games to increase input and output of language
Vocabulary Fields:
Typical and special foods in (Peru)
Food preparation: customs and taboos - verbs like buy, cook, prepare, eat, like/dislike; nouns like food items, cooking utensils, restaurant vocabulary
Spanish language used for table talk, for instruction (recipes) and for shopping for food
Creative Spanish words and formulaic phrases for menus, restaurant reviews, advertising
Formulaic polite language for ordering and shopping
Implications for reworking unit/pedagogy/assessment:
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Start each sub-unit with the big ideas. Why should students care about this subtopic and make the effort to learn Spanish food language?
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Finding ways to help students transfer the learnt parts of Spanish and enable them to transfer the learning to the new context
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Finding ways to allow students to bring their interests and contexts to the overall unit, e.g identifying support material for each sub-unit if the sequence is not taught to the whole class at the same time: scaffolding tasks and a variety of text types (print, visual and audio) for student to work independently need to be in place and protocols for use established
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Helping students to see how interaction, participation and contribution will increase the quality of their communication
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Adding clear success criteria for assessment for learning, guiding students to gather evidence of their Spanish learning and progress

It was humbling for me to be offered another teacher’s work to modify, and I tried to be as true to the teacher’s intentions as possible as I tried to incorporate the intentions of the NZC.
This original unit already incorporated many of the approaches inherent in the NZC; when planning the teaching unit for food, I tried to concentrate on the aspect that after the initial teaching of the necessary Spanish for the topic, students could be left to their own interests to pursue. When they work in groups in order to fulfil the success criteria, they must be able to access the internet for authentic and up to date texts, written, visual and spoken. This point needs to be made clear to school manage ment and the school’s ICT managers: to be able to access authentic sites like this is the key to intercultural learning! It also sets the basis for success at NCEA level, where an increased reliance on interculturality and authentic texts will be evident.
I found it helpful to start with the BIG IDEA, from there moving to the NZC’s proficiency descriptor and the AOs. The success criteria flowed on from here. The hard work, I imagine, will be to manage students to become more independent learners. When this is achieved, this should leave time for me as the teacher to support students individually or in groups, according to their needs.
At each step of looking at this unit, I continually asked myself questions eg why would I do this, how will I do this, what would the students want, how do I know, so what, how is this useful in real life? This is an Inquiry approach the teaching and learning (see effective pedagogies in the NZC p.35), and I believe these questions can only improve teaching, even though they might be hard to deal with initially, because they will shift my routine approaches. The big shift in this unit is from teacher-centred to student-centred; I hope that the students will feel as excited as I am…