Teacher(s) Andrea Ouimette

Subject group and discipline Language acquisition: Spanish

Unit title

MYP Year

El Tiempo Libre

Year 9

Unit duration 10 weeks (60 hours)

Inquiry: Establishing the purpose of the unit

Key concept

Related concept(s)

Identity

Global context

Language acquisition: Phases 12

Message
Purpose
Word choice
Language acquisition: Phases 34
Audience
Meaning
Message
Point of view
Word choice

Identities and relationships

Learning about our interests and what we like to do

helps us to grow and develop
Exploration to Develop: Physical, psychological
and social development; transitions; health and wellbeing; lifestyle choices

Statement of inquiry
Having hobbies and interests during your free time allows you to develop skills and make connections with others.
Inquiry questions
What are some things that interest you?
What is a hobby?

Factual

Objectives
A: Comprehending spoken and visual text
Phase 3
i. show understanding of information, main
ideas and supporting details, and draw
conclusions in familiar and some unfamiliar
situations
ii. understand conventions
iii. engage with the spoken and visual text by
identifying ideas, opinions and attitudes and by
making a response to the text based on
personal experiences and opinions.

Middle Years Programme Unit planner

What have you learned about yourself

through the extracurricular activities you take
part in?
Why do they say it's important to have hobbies?
Conceptual

Debatable

What's more important, school or free

time?
Are free time activities equally important as
academic activities?

Summative assessment
Relationship between summative assessment task(s) and
statement of inquiry:

Formative: Writing a role play (an interview) about a new

Spanish-speaking student who arrives to your school.
You must make them feel welcome and ask them
questions about themselves to get to know them better.
Students will write and then act/out speak the role play
Summative: The writing done in the formative task will
help set the course for the Writing Assessment (an email
to a pen pal) which happens later on in the unit.

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B: Comprehending written and visual text

Phase 3
i. show understanding of information, main
ideas and supporting details, and draw
conclusions
ii. understand basic conventions including
aspects of format and style, and authors
purpose for writing
iii. engage with the written and visual text by
identifying ideas, opinions and attitudes and by
making a response to the text based on
personal experiences and opinions.
C: Communicating in response to spoken, written
and visual text
Phase 3
i. respond appropriately to spoken, written
and visual text in a range of familiar and some
unfamiliar situations
ii. interact in rehearsed and unrehearsed
exchanges on a limited variety of aspects within
familiar and some unfamiliar situations
iii. express ideas and feelings, and
communicate information in familiar and some
unfamiliar situations
iv. communicate with a sense of audience
and purpose.
D: Using language in spoken and written form
Phase 3
i. write and speak using a range of
vocabulary, grammatical structures and
conventions; when speaking, use clear
pronunciation and intonation
ii. organize information and ideas and use a
range of basic cohesive devices
iii. use language to suit the context.

Summative: Phase 1 & 2 students will listen to a short

audio track with visual stimulus and answer
comprehension questions on this task.
Phase 3 students and above will watch a short video
about an interview with Leo Messi and answer
comprehension questions on this task.

Approaches to learning (ATL)

Language acquisition
A: Comprehending spoken and visual text
i. identify basic facts, messages, main ideas and supporting details in everyday situations
iii. engage with the spoken and visual text by identifying ideas, opinions and attitudes and by making a personal response to the text.

Middle Years Programme Unit planner

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 i. show understanding of messages, main ideas and supporting details in familiar situations
iii. engage with the spoken and visual text by identifying ideas, opinions and attitudes and by making a personal response to the text.
i. show understanding of information, main ideas and supporting details, and draw conclusions in familiar and some unfamiliar situations
iii. engage with the spoken and visual text by identifying ideas, opinions and attitudes and by making a response to the text based on personal experiences and
opinions.
D: Using language in spoken and written form
i. write and speak using a basic range of vocabulary, grammatical structures and conventions; when speaking, use clear pronunciation and intonation
iii. use language to suit the context.
i. write and speak using a basic range of vocabulary, grammatical structures and conventions; when speaking, use clear pronunciation and intonation
ii. organize information and ideas and use a range of basic cohesive devices
iii. use language to suit the context.
ii. organize information and ideas and use a range of basic cohesive devices
iii. use language to suit the context.

Communication

I. Communication skills
Exchanging thoughts, messages and information
effectively through interaction
Use appropriate forms of writing for different
purposes and audiences
Use a variety of media to communicate with a range
of audiences
Collaborate with peers and experts using a variety
of digital environments and media
Share ideas with multiple audiences using a variety
of digital environments and media
Reading, writing and using language to gather and
communicate information
Make inferences and draw conclusions
Write for different purposes
Paraphrase accurately and concisely

Action: Teaching and learning through inquiry

Content

Learning process

Knowledge & Skills:

Learning Experiences

Learning a base of vocabulary to describe leisure

activities, recognizing and constructing different text
types, gleaning information from a video

Middle Years Programme Unit planner

Students will see examples and rubrics ahead of time. All assessment tasks will be clearly explained to them
and posted on Ding. Additionally formative assessments will be very similar to summative assessments which
means they will be an excellent opportunity to practice necessary skills. We will also create vocabulary lists that
the students can use when studying.

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 Communicating through a variety of different written/

spoken text types: blogs, email, interview (role play).

Most students will not have much prior knowledge for this unit, apart from some sports and activities. Any
students with sufficient prior knowledge may be given extended work surrounding the topic (reading from a
magazine, completing some higher level activities, etc)
Teaching strategies
Students with SEN/LDT needs will have modified exams and usually modified tasks during class time. I will try
to use a lot of modeling, repetition, student centered teaching and visual aids to help in instruction. Feedback
from formative assessment will allow students to have a chance to see their errors or areas for improvement and
build on them. Immediately following a summative task or a larger formative project, I like to ask students
themselves to identify their strengths and areas for improvement or ask them what they can do to improve.

Describe how you will differentiate teaching & learning for this unit?
There will be different forms of the assessment based on the students' Phase Level (acquisition level). In
addition, formative tasks will be modified in the length and expectations of requirements.
Learner Profile
Communicators: Students will write & speak about activities they enjoy outside of class.
Balanced: Students will demonstrate work/life balance in reflecting on the activities they enjoy doing outside of school. They will also briefly reflect on the benefits of
pursuing hobbies and passions.
Resources
File: Cancion__Me_gustas_tu__Manu_Chao_Rellenar_huecos.doc
Reflection: Considering the planning, process and impact of the inquiry
Prior to teaching the unit

During teaching

After teaching the unit

Why do we think that the unit or the selection of topics

will be interesting?

What difficulties did we encounter while completing the

unit or the summative assessment task(s)?

What were the learning outcomes of this unit?

Middle Years Programme Unit planner

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What do students already know, and what can they do?

What attributes of the learner profile does this unit offer
students opportunities to develop?
What potential interdisciplinary connections can we
identify?
I've chosen this unit because it gives students the
opportunity to speak about their own personal
interests, which most kids like to discuss. Previously,
students have already learned expressions to discuss
likes and dislikes in Spanish. Also, they had learned
the vocabulary for several sports. So prior to the unit:
"Tiempo Libre" students could communicate some
sports and interests at a very basic level. To build on
previous knowledge, students focused on additional
hobbies, adverbs of frequency to discuss how often
they do these activities and common verbs needed to
discuss playing/doing activities.
Considering this topic of sports and exercise, the unit
ties into health and wellness and could be linked to
Physical Education class. Building on this idea, I
wanted students to take the unit one step further and
think about other benefits to having hobbies and
interests outside of school.
The idea of pursuing hobbies hopefully creates a wellrounded student, and this links to being a balanced
individual, one of the attributes of the LP.

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What student inquiries are emerging?

What skills need more practice?
What is the level of student engagement?
How well are the learning experiences aligned with the
units objectives?
Skills that need more practice are generally
conjugating verbs. We will tackle this obstacle by
doing a lot of writing practice, with my gold being to
read the students' work and give them feedback and
help correct mistakes.
Some challenges of teaching a unit such as this are
generally differentiating for the various levels of
acquisition in the Year 9 class. The topic is usually
engaging for students but trying to make it
challenging for upper phase students while still
making it accessible for the lower Phase students is
always a challenge. Overall, I want the message of
the unit to be more than just a superficial discussion
about sports and hobbies that students like. Ideally,
students need to reflect on the Statement of Inquiry:
"Having hobbies and interests allows you to develop
new skills and make connections with others". This is
obviously much harder for a Phase 1 or Phase 2
student to discuss, but the goal is for them to at least
be able to create one sentence explaining the benefits
of participating in activities outside of school/the
classroom.

Was the task sufficiently complex to allow students to

reach the highest levels?
What evidence of learning can we identify?
What will we do differently next time?
I've taught this unit in the past. Initially, it was more
about exploring different likes/dislikes that students
could express. At this point, I really want to focus
making the unit about more than just a surface level
conversation about sports and exercise (which are the
activities most students choose to focus on).
Overall, the message of the unit need to keep going
back to the Statement of Inquiry: "Having hobbies
and interests allows you to develop new skills and
make connections with others". I kept referring back
to this idea and asking students to include it in their
formative tasks (both speaking and writing).
I think the task was sufficiently complex to allow
students to reach the highest levels, it's not
something that they necessarily discuss or think
about, other than maybe reflecting for Community &
Engagement. Students who are more proficient
should be able to discuss and clarify this point in
Spanish. For lower level students, this will be more
challenging. Perhaps giving those lower level
students more scaffolding, first in English and then in
Spanish of how to express this idea would be useful
as we continue to teach this unit.

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