Download 14 weeks of free curriculum and preview the Free Year of Curriculum we have produced for Spanish, English, French, and German, and the Free Semester of Curriculum in Latin and Italian (and three free lessons in Chinese, too!)

The Stepping Stones Free Year of Curriculum is a complete, multi-level, year-long FREE curriculum designed for in-person instruction and distance learning, and can be used for both live online lessons as well as asynchronous online learning. It can also serve as a basis for hybrid instruction, if you are asked to teach both face-to-face and online simultaneously. Each lesson contains resources and instructions on how to support Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced courses, and differentiated learning goals and assessment materials. To download a PDF preview of the contents, please click here.

The Scope and Sequence for Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced courses, can be accessed here.

I am offering the entire year for free, as it is completed throughout the summer, fall, and winter, translated and culturally adapted for English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Latin (ASL, Chinese and Japanese are in the works, to be released during 2020-21, on a later timeline).

The reason I am making the Starter Curriculum available for free is because I want as many teachers as possible to have this tool in these uncertain and challenging times for education, due to the escalating COVID-19 crisis and the resulting economic fallout. Teachers are working so hard, and in such urgent circumstances, and I hope that these materials will substantially ease workloads, uncertainty, and stress levels for many teachers. So please spread the word!

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About Stepping Stones

Stepping Stones divides the year into six instructional cycles based on language functions:

(1) Description

(2) Narration

(3) Going Deeper with Narration

(4) Information

(5) Opinion,

(6) Argument

Within each of these six-week cycles are four phases, each containing approximately six lessons, a review lesson, and an end-of-cycle performance assessment of interpretive reading, presentational writing, interpretive listening, and interpersonal speaking. Presentational speaking is also an option for performance assessments.

Each phase is thus designed to cover approximately eight days of instruction. But there are so many options that you could also “stretch” the phase to cover about ten, or even twelve, lessons, if need be.

These cycles, phases, and individual lessons are also designed to be modular, meaning that you can skip, replace, or modify any cycle, phase, or lesson, to fit into your instructional calendar or take time to teach other content, such as required common assessments or other content that your department or administrators require.

I designed these materials to be used with the simplest of technology, and without requiring students to provide their email addresses, login to any online systems, or appear on camera for online classes. Protecting student privacy is very important to me. Also, keeping the tech tools simple, few, and free for you, the teacher, to access is important to me.

Your students can participate fully in these lessons by simply accessing the provided Google Forms, which contain visual aids aligned to the instructional materials provided for you on the Padlet. These Google Forms are students’ daily workspace, and contain reading, listening, writing, and word work. They are aligned to the Stepping Stones Daily Instructional Framework, so each form follows the same structure of the lesson, with new content aligned to the day’s lesson. This structure allows you and your students to develop a sense of predictability and calm, and allows you to free up more of your mental energy for teaching, not planning, sequencing, and structuring your instruction. You have access to the editable Google Forms, so that you can modify and adapt them to fit your schedule, content, and other needs.

I have worked hard to make these materials as culturally-sustaining as possible, and to weave into the entire curriculum stories and information that promote students’ critical thinking and sense-making of racial and social injustice. In these materials, you will find ways to have courageous conversations about race with even Beginner classes, and ways to teach about the experiences, perspectives, struggle, resilience, beauty, and joy of Black figures, Indigenous figures, and people of Color from around the Spanish-speaking world and right here in the U.S.

Intercultural competence, in my way of thinking, begins by critically examining one’s own culture, so you will find in these materials, across the year, an interweaving of self-reflection on race, color, and our various identities, with an exploration of cultural practices, products, and perspectives from the incredible, fascinating, and rich diversity of the people who comprise the wide world of Spanish speakers. These materials help to bring that richness to your classroom from the very first year, to open windows for your students as well as portray positive, inspiring Black and Indigenous role models and role models of Color from around the globe, in history as well as in our current time.

I am extremely proud of what you will see in this padlet. These materials are beautiful to look at, inviting to the eye, and designed to build students’ literacy in Spanish as well as their cross-curricular reading and writing skills. They are fully aligned to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign (or World) Language (ACTFL) standards, performance indicators, and Can-Do Statements. They also incorporate many Common Core Literacy standards and contain cross-disciplinary content that brings in information and habits of mind from social science, history, literacy, knowledge of language forms (grammar) as a concept in context, science, mathematics, physical and human geography, business and careers, and information science.

This is a revolutionary approach to World Language teaching, and I am grateful to be in a position where I can make these materials available at no cost to teachers, tutors, and schools. If you would like more support, including one-on-one coaching, a subscription to our online Curriculum Club membership (a live coaching program that provides unlimited access to all our TpT materials - both the free and the paid ones), or consulting and support for your department or district, please email info@ciliftoff.com and let us know what we can do to support you.

It is my sincere hope that these materials will transform your Spanish program, make comprehension-based, communicative language teaching easy to grasp, concrete, and doable for you, and help you to have a solid foundation and sense of direction this year, to the extent possible, given the ongoing and escalating uncertainty and challenges we face as a planet, a nation, and a profession.

Chin up and happy teaching, dear friends and colleagues!

To listen to a 23-minute podcast I recently recorded on the topic of the current situation and some preliminary thoughts on next year, please check out this link.

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This three-lesson Launching Padlet contains simple getting-to-know-you and getting-to-know-the-technology lessons.

The purpose is to help you launch into this Stepping Stones Starter Curriculum with confidence. It is recommended to teach these lessons to begin online instruction or, if you are beginning the year with face-to-face lessons, within the first week of class, using tech devices at school (or assigning them for homework so that students can practice at home and problem-solve with you when they come to class in person) just in case there is a transition to online learning later.

The rest of the year is in development, and will be released sequentially throughout the summer and fall. Download a PDF that outlines the target dates and anticipated contents of the first three cycles of French (approximately the first semester) in this PDF, which is also uploaded to the padlet. The Latin contents are still in development, but they will mirror the French.

Contents:

Link to Latin Launching Lessons Padlet - which contains:

A PDF preview of Lesson One from the Cycle One Phase One Step By Step Guide, which gives a model “script” for Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced lessons using the Padlet contents. It walks you through how English and Spanish are used to set up and conduct the lesson. These Step By Step Guides will be available to purchase soon.

A PDF of Cycle One Phase One Standards Correlations that give ACTFL standards, performance indicators for multiple levels, Common Core standards correlations, and performance evidence for each instructional strategy in the phase. They are also aligned to Understanding by Design principles, and contain Essential Questions and Enduring Understandings for the phase.

A link to an unlisted YouTube playlist of short video demos from my online French classes, showing you how the Padlet contents and the Google Form are used throughout the lesson

Teacher Notes for each lesson, with learning outcomes for Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced classes and step-by-step instructions for how to conduct the lesson using the materials on the Padlet and the Google Form

A Fillable PDF for the Launching Lessons Shared Writing Packet, with writing teaching points for Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced lessons, aligned to the literacy focus of the phase - Describing settings using sensory details (weather, visual details, etc.)

A Google “Slide & Show” “Would You Rather” with moveable graphics to support a “getting to know each other” discussion the class’s preferences

Editable Google Forms for each lesson, for student responses, with embedded graphics to support student comprehension of the language and concepts from the lesson

“Find That Cognate” Reading Workshop Launching Texts - use the same text for Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced classes, to keep things simple and practice online learning with your students

Google Slideshow and Video Lecture (both provided, so you can use the format that works best for you) on “Sobre el Maestro” or “Sobre la Maestra” depending on the endings you want to use to introduce yourself

A fillable Language Portfolio PDF for students to use during the Launching Assessment. The packet also includes student self-assessment, self-reflection and goal-setting. Having students self-score and reflect prior to collecting the packets and entering grades makes the task of authentic portfolio performance assessment much more efficient for teachers and much more meaningful for students

A Class Yearbook Pages PDF, which provides an option for you and your students to keep a permanent record of what you learned about each other during these lessons.

Links to purchase additional enrichment material that we are developing for our TpT store and Curriculum Club members. For each lesson, we will be developing:

(a) Video Lectures (“Do It Yourself Movie Talk”) and a fillable PDF of one or more Graphic Organizers for notetaking, aligned to each lesson (See our first product listing here.)

(b) Fillable PDFs of Graphic Organizers aligned to the padlet contents for each lesson

(b) Advanced Readings and Text-Based Responses aligned to the lesson content and AP/IB themes and topics (See our first product listing here.)

(c) Leveled Visual Readings aligned to the lesson content and AP/IB themes and topics, for Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced students, to begin exposing even first-year students to more advanced themes and topics

(d) “Inquiring Minds” Grammar Concepts for Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced lessons, aligned to the provided Reading Workshop passages, to teach language forms (grammar) in a meaningful context and compile a class Editing Checklist to guide students to apply their language knowledge to their writing when peer and/or self editing.

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These resources were lots of fun to make, and I sincerely hope that it lightens your load this upcoming school year and gives you tools to transform your language program into the future!

If you were in Curriculum Club, everything to support and extend this Starter Curriculum, including everything in the TpT store that I have made or will ever make!) would be FREE!

For more information on our 2020-2021 Curriculum Club, which closes September 12, 2020, please visit this link. If you have questions on Curriculum Club or any of our other resources, please email help@ciliftoff.com.

Follow CI Liftoff on Pinterest to get all the latest about our TpT products!

Happy teaching, my dear, dear colleagues!

Total Pages

Answer Key

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Teaching Duration

3 days

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