How to use CI With a Textbook

This post contains some affiliate links, which means that we make a small commission off items you purchase at no additional cost to you.

Inside: How to plan Comprehensible Input lessons when using a textbook? How to use CI strategies when you are tied to a district assessment? I’m part of a department, how do I use CI and TPRS with my students? 

If you’re a member of a bigger district or department, chances are your curriculum is tied to a textbook or a prescriptive curriculum. For some, this just means giving a common semester exam. For others, this means vocab quizzes, tests, and other assessments are all supposed to be in step. Is it possible to make CI “work” in this case? Let’s chat about that!

This post is part of my HOW TO TRANSITION TO CI METHODS series. Check out the other posts here!

How to Teach with CI with a Textbook in Spanish Class Video

How to Start Using CI with a Textbook Curriculum

Start with the end goal in mind. If your students’ success is to be measured by a district assessment, then that’s what you need to look at as you plan. What will your students need to do to show mastery, as defined by that assessment? What are the learning targets? If the target is, “Student will be able to conjugate irregular verbs in the preterite,” then take that into account in your stories. Are there particular vocab words or phrases that show up a lot? Jot those down. Once you have your list of things that MUST happen, it’s time to move onto the timeline.

Pacing for CI with a Textbook

The process will vary depending on which party you were in for district assessments. Do you have to give chapter tests? Our district tends to do a chapter every 10-14 class days, with 50 minute class periods, seeing students every day. That window for acquisition is pretty small. Only give quarterly assessments? You have a bit longer, but you still need to be strategic in your planning. Do you have freedom throughout the semester, but give a district final exam? You have some more time! I’ve tried different strategies for those different time frames, so here we go!

Shorter Timeline

If you have to give chapter tests, this is a little bit tricky. In my opinion, it’s harder to find and use other people’s stories or curriculum because you have very specific targets you need to hit. What we have done is look at the grammatical focus for the unit, look at the vocab chunks, and then write stories to go with what the students needed to do. They are SHORT stories, between 8-15 sentences.

For example, for our unit with weather & tener phrases, we came up with a story about Carlos the cactus who was hot in the desert so he went to Colorado, where he was finally cold. Unfortunately, Carlos is scared of bears in the mountains. He wants to go skiing, but he’s afraid. He finally goes skiing, and he gets eaten by a bear.Totally wacky, but we were able to get in a lot of weather and tener phrases in those short sentences!

The chapter pacing tends to be about 3-4 days on story, with vocab warm ups, then 1-2 days on reading activities. The reading activities are either with the first version, a parallel version, or an expanded version of the story. We usually take a vocab quiz on day 7 or 8 of a unit so the first “half” of the chapter is generally focused on vocabulary.

We also use the stories to introduce the grammatical chunks in context. From here our strategies have varied. Depending on the grammar focus, sometimes we’ve done short stations to practice, sometimes we’ve just done traditional grammar “rules”, or more storied practice. This strategy is definitely more of a “blend” of traditional grammar-based instruction coupled with comprehensible input in the form of short stories or clip chats due to the deadline placed by the test.

Longer Timeline

Do you have a district assessment you have to give, but have a quarter, or a whole semester to work with students before that happens? From what I’ve seen, a lot of people seem to be in this boat. You have to follow a textbook for a scope, and the grammatical points, but you can cover the material however you want.

Again, I’d suggest sitting down with the assessment. What are the major targets and things students are expected to be able to do when they hit end of the semester? Write up a list. Are there certain vocabulary words or phrases they “need” to have? Add them to the list. Got everything? (Mine is usually a scribbled, jumbled mess at this point).

Now you need to decide, how are you going to hit those targets? For us, two of the specific plans we put into place this semester were Música Miércoles and Persona Especial. Música Miércoles specifically is great practice with ser, origin, and nationality, especially since we talk about where each artist or group is from. Once a week for a whole semester? They’re pretty awesome at talking about where someone is from now!

Persona Especial kind of morphed into this catch-all extra practice. A lot of semester one of Spanish I is basic talking about self and Persona Especial is GREAT for that! I would be the first to tell you that our questions and routines for Persona Especial expanded and grew as we went through the semester! (I mention a few of the changes to that routine here in my reflection post!).

We added more questions about pets, because we then practiced describing them. We’ve added questions about sports, instruments, how often they listen to music, and their family members, all to build on the things we have used in our stories, and things that they are interested in sharing about, but also to move towards those final assessments (hello, frequency words, gustar, and family members).

Chris Stolz has a pretty sweet post about how to cover all of the “boring stuff” that you need to cover, and I think it’s awesome. Do your kids need to count to 100 in Spanish? Every story gets a number. The boy doesn’t just want one cat, he wants 88 cats. He’s going to be a crazy old cat man. Oh, they have to have adjective agreement and colors? Now the boy wants 88 blue cats. I shared a bit more about this in my post about adjectives in Spanish. The idea here is to cover the things you must cover using strategies you want to use.

Every now and then as you progress through your time frame, I’d encourage you to revisit your list, combined with data of your students’ abilities from formative assessments. Make sure you’re checking in on where they’re at, and that you haven’t lost sight of where you need to be. It’s easy to get caught up in a fun story for a few days in a row, because it’s good, authentic, and fun language use, but it’s important to prepare your students for that assessment, especially if it’s going to make up a significant portion of their grade as required by your district, or department.

The reality is that grades matter, transcripts matter, and they’ll affect their college plans. You already know this, and care about your students, or you wouldn’t be here, reading about ways to help them succeed.

This past semester we revisited our list 4-5 separate times, and it helped us readjust our trajectory and plan again. We created stories, Clip Chats/Movie Talks, and Picture Talks specifically to hit things the students needed more on. There were some things our students were REALLY solid at, and then there was the listening assessment on the final that made me realize we hadn’t used the word “biblioteca” in class..not once. Whoops. You can’t be perfect, but you can try your best!

Overall, my semester was comprised of weekly routines and story units that were all focused in on that first list that we created from the district assessment. Some of the story units were based on resources we found or purchased, but at least half, if not more, were story units and activities we created on our own to fit our classroom and our students’ needs.

How to Teach CI with a Textbook

This post got way longer than I thought it might, but I hope it’s helpful for you. I definitely think it’s possible to incorporate methods of TPRS and Comprehensible Input along with a textbook, and most people already do, whether or not they realize it! The trick is that you want your students to acquire the language and structures naturally, which doesn’t always fit on the timeline decided by a textbook. I hope this post gives you some ideas for ways to make things work for you and your students, in whatever situation you are in!

Feel free to drop any questions you have for me below, or come find me on Instagram!

Ashley Mikkelsen

Hi, I'm Ashley. I'm so glad you're here! I love helping secondary Spanish teachers with engaging activities and ideas for their lesson plans. I can't wait to support you with no and low prep activities to help reduce your workload!

Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email

Shop this post

12 Responses

  1. Thanks for a clearly-laid-out schedule of blocks to include in a CI unit. I am in the midst of creating CI units based on a textbook, and this really gave me some concrete starting points!

    1. Hello Ashley!
      I LOVE, LOVE EVERYTHING you post! You have been given many gifts in teaching Spanish! It is so wonderful!
      Where could I find a comprehensible input seminar in person in the south or on line? Free would be great but if it costs I know it will be so worth it!
      I would love to learn how to do it from the ground up for beginners.
      Thank you sooooooo much!
      Yvette Nicholson

  2. Do you try to fit in all of each chapter’s vocabulary in one story? Or is some vocab just recycled more than others? Thanks for this post!

    1. Oh man, I have the WORST answer for you. It depends. It totally depends. Some chapters are just loaded with cognates so we wind up focusing on any loners or things the kiddos might need more reinforcement on. Another strategy that has worked really well have been using a series of embedded readings. The readings follow the same plot, but we might tweak the vocab used, or flip the characters. It’s familiar enough to the students that switching out a few things doesn’t make it out of reach, but it allows us to hit some of those other words in a familiar context. Some words DO get recycled a ton more – maybe something that’s extra tricky, or they just seem to forget, or that I know is going to be something that will show up on a chapter, unit, or semester exam in a big way. However, the words that we want to really, really emphasize we tend to put into Persona Especial questions (or another routine) in some way so they are hit every time we do that routine, rather than just in a shorter chapter. I hope that gives you some ideas!

  3. Wow! Thank you so much for all of the great ideas, this is the year I want our department to make the transition to CI. What do you do for a notebook? Do you use one? I really would like the students to stay organized, and want to start out with a method that others have seen successful- any ideas?

    1. Hi! I do use notebooks, but I usually leave it up to the students if they prefer a notebook or binder as I generally use handouts with guided notes on them when we take any notes in class so some students put them in binders, some tape pages into their notebooks, and some just keep a folder!

  4. Ashley, I have been following you for several years, and have learned so much! Thank you for all you do!
    I look a break from teaching for two years to be a caregiver to my mom who had cancer.
    I am starting back to teaching middle school in two weeks at a new school with a new textbook (lots of new things all at once!) I am nervous, but eager to try CI. I would love to collaborate with you or any of your followers to create all of the CI activities like stories, persona especial, etc that follow/align with my new textbook, Autentico. Would you or anyone else be interested?

    1. Oh Susan! I’m so glad to hear that you are excited for your shift. I am not able to take on such a project right now – we’re expecting a new baby in our house this fall 🎉 but there are some Facebook groups I’m familiar with that are textbook specific that might help you make a connection – or even general Spanish teacher groups! I’ll add some links here for you:
      Spanish Teachers in the US https://www.facebook.com/groups/221167251425345
      Realidades/Auténtico textbook teachers https://www.facebook.com/groups/2386395454713743/
      Middle School Spanish Teachers in the US https://www.facebook.com/groups/2384045385203476

      I hope that helps!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Welcome

Find it Fast

Our Shop