How to Use Comprehensible Input in a Textbook-Aligned Curriculum with Joshua Cabral

If your curriculum is tied to a textbook or follows strict units with common assessments, you might wonder: Can I still use CI (Comprehensible Input) techniques? The short answer? Yes—and today’s post shows how.

In this episode of the World Language Classroom Podcast, host Joshua Cabral chats with Ashley Mikkelsen (me!). We share experience blending CI strategies into a curriculum that includes textbook chapters and district-wide assessments—some of which aren’t even proficiency-based.

A Realistic Approach to CI

In this episode, we give a realistic, classroom-tested look at what it means to integrate CI into a structured curriculum. It’s not about throwing out the textbook entirely or ignoring district expectations—it’s about finding ways to bring language to life within the boundaries you’re given.

Joshua and Ashley discuss:

• The flexibility (or lack thereof) many teachers have in their curriculum
• Creative ways to bring in CI activities even when units and assessments are pre-determined
• How Ashley uses her own lens of realism to make it all work

A Message of Encouragement for Teachers

This episode is packed with helpful ideas for teachers who feel stuck between wanting to use more CI and needing to follow a specific curriculum. Whether you’re just starting to dip your toes into CI or you’re a seasoned pro navigating district expectations, these insights will remind you that you can make it work.

Listen to the Full Episode

From Textbook to CI: The Origin Story

When it comes to implementing comprehensible input (CI), many teachers wonder where to even begin—especially if they’re working with a required textbook. For Ashley, her journey started with a spontaneous road trip, an inspiring conference, and one unforgettable learning experience.

The Conference That Changed Everything

Ashley recalls the pivotal moment that kickstarted her shift toward CI. Just three days before she planned to try something new in her classroom, Allison from Mis Clases Locas hosted a free CI-focused conference. Ashley and a group of five or six colleagues from her district piled into a Suburban and made the road trip to Iowa.

“It was full of demonstrations and real examples of what CI looks like in action,” Ashley shares. “The sessions were in German, and even though we were all Spanish teachers, we were amazed at how confident we felt in German after just a few days.”

That powerful experience gave them a taste of what their students could feel with input-driven instruction.

A Lesson Plan Written in the Back of a Suburban

In a twist of fate, one of the conference presenters needed a ride to catch a later flight—and their group had an airport in their hometown. Naturally, they brought him along. That meant they had an expert literally riding with them on the way home.

“He helped us brainstorm and refine ideas right there in the car,” Ashley says. “We were about to start a new textbook chapter, so we decided: ‘Okay, we can do this. There’s a way to make this work.’”

Squeezed into the back of the Suburban, one teacher typing furiously in the middle seat, they co-wrote a story and reworked the next day’s lesson to be more input-focused. It was their first real attempt at bringing CI into their textbook-aligned curriculum.

The CI Kickoff

The very next day, their guest presenter—Craig—came to their classes, observed their CI lessons, and offered feedback.

After all the excitement of the weekend, the team waved goodbye to Craig at the airport and looked at each other thinking, Well… that was day one. Now what?

Ashley laughs as she reflects: “I tend to be full steam ahead once I get an idea. I just go for it. I knew we had to figure out how to make this work.”

And the challenge? They were still using a textbook—and their curriculum still moved chapter by chapter.

Starting Strong—with a Sprint

When Ashley and her department first began experimenting with CI while using a textbook-based curriculum, they didn’t just dip their toes in—they dove in headfirst.

“It was like a sprinting start,” Ashley says. “We had a very specific set of vocabulary, a very specific set of grammar, and a very specific timeline.”

Ashley taught in a large department—13 sections of Spanish 1 alone—where consistency was key. Students often moved from one section to another, and the team worked hard to ensure a smooth, seamless experience no matter who the teacher was. “A student could walk out of my classroom and into a colleague’s without missing a beat,” she explains.

CI Meets the Pacing Guide

This well-oiled machine made introducing something as flexible and student-driven as CI a challenge.

“We started by building a story that fit the vocabulary and grammar we had to cover,” Ashley recalls. That first unit was a test run of sorts: How can we use story-asking and student interaction while still meeting pacing expectations?

The answer: carefully.

Because CI lessons often respond in real time to student input, the pacing could shift unexpectedly. “Sometimes a story would take a wild turn, or we’d spend more time on one part than we planned,” Ashley says. “That was really fun—and exciting to share between colleagues—but also tricky.”

While one class might breeze through the content, another might linger longer in a conversation-rich story. That fluidity made it harder to keep every section aligned. And in a department that had been very grammar-focused and highly textbook driven, that flexibility was both exciting and a little uncomfortable.

Balancing Input and Accountability

To add to the pressure, Ashley’s department had a 200-question multiple choice final exam at the end of the year. “We knew what was going to be on it, and we knew what the Spanish 2 teachers expected our students to come in knowing,” she says.

That accountability meant there was little room to skip required topics, even if a story took a fun turn. And with students regularly shuffled between sections, consistency remained essential.

“We wanted to be fair to our students, and fair to our colleagues,” Ashley explains. “But we also wanted to try this new thing that felt really good—and we believed it could work.”

From Vocabulary Lists to Storytelling: What Changed in the Classroom

Before implementing CI, Ashley’s classes followed a very traditional rhythm: introduce vocabulary with slides and translation, spend a few days on matching games or scaffolded speaking activities, and finish the week with a vocabulary quiz. It was structured, predictable, and familiar.

But when CI entered the picture, everything shifted.

“We started by writing a story using the vocabulary we had to cover,” Ashley says. Instead of front-loading vocabulary lists, they built simple, silly stories that wove in the required terms—especially the ones students typically found tricky. Cognates were used, of course, but the focus was on the words students would need repeated exposure to in context.

The first week of a chapter now revolved around reading and interacting with that story. They discussed it, reread versions of it, swapped characters or settings, and built on it in creative ways.

“It wasn’t about memorizing definitions anymore,” Ashley explains. “It was about making the language meaningful.”

Making It Work with a Textbook

The district required a set curriculum—complete with a textbook, specific grammar points, and a final exam that left little room for deviation. But rather than seeing this as a roadblock, she used the textbook as a launchpad.

They would start with a chapter—like one on idiomatic expressions with tener—and brainstorm settings or scenarios that could bring those phrases to life in a fun, comprehensible way. “We’d literally cross off each expression as we worked it into the story,” Ashley says.

At first, their stories were too long—sometimes 25 sentences. But over time, they realized that even 7–9 well-crafted sentences were enough to build a strong foundation. From there, they created multiple versions of the story, each with minor changes that recycled vocabulary and kept students engaged.

This allowed for repeated exposure and a sense of familiarity, while still introducing new twists. “Students would say, ‘Oh, I see where this is going,’ but still be surprised and interested,” Ashley says.

Engagement That Sparked a Shift

The results were hard to ignore.

“Students’ language use just exploded,” Ashley says. “It wasn’t like they weren’t into it before—but now they were into the Spanish.”

By spring, after a semester of traditional instruction and several chapters of CI-based learning, Ashley saw a dramatic shift. Students weren’t hesitating or second-guessing themselves as much. They were responding, predicting, and owning the stories.

Even class-to-class chatter changed. “They’d talk at lunch about what happened in their class period’s story. ‘Our character did this,’ or ‘My friend said her class had a monkey at the zoo,’” Ashley laughs.

One of the most powerful moments came during a writing sample. “Some of my Spanish 1 students were writing at a level I wouldn’t have expected from my Spanish 2s,” she says. “Their confidence, their risk-taking—it just blew me away.”

Finding Balance: Adapting CI Within a Structured Curriculum

After years of incorporating CI into her Spanish classroom, Ashley found herself facing a new challenge: how to strike a balance between the freedom CI offered and the prescribed curriculum that needed to be followed. As her department began to navigate this divide, Ashley quickly realized that there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.

“It became a tricky balance,” she says. “Some of us were all-in, ready to upend everything. But not everyone was on the same page. Some teachers were comfortable with what they had been doing, and we had a really strong AP program to show for it. Why change?”

The conversations around change weren’t always easy. “There were a lot of voices, a lot of different opinions. Some people wanted to make big shifts, others took baby steps, and some weren’t sure if CI was the right fit for their levels,” Ashley reflects.

But rather than pushing for a complete overhaul, Ashley and her colleagues found ways to adapt. “We started making changes within boundaries. We didn’t have to completely abandon everything we had done, but we found ways to incorporate CI and make it work,” she says.

This careful adjustment meant that some teachers in the department embraced CI more wholeheartedly, while others introduced small CI-inspired activities into their lessons. Over time, the department shared some simple changes, like integrating different listening activities or more reading materials. “It wasn’t an overnight shift, but it was a gradual one,” Ashley explains.

Navigating the Divide with Empathy and Patience

The departmental divide Ashley describes is a reality many teachers face when adopting CI. It’s easy to think that once you’re excited about a new method, everyone else should be too.

“I had to remind myself that everyone in my department wanted what was best for their students, even if their way of getting there looked different from mine,” she says. When the divide felt overwhelming, Ashley returned to the core of the conversation: “We all want what’s best for our students.”

With that shared understanding, the discussions about CI became less about convincing others to fully adopt the method and more about finding ways to collaborate. “When you go into those conversations remembering that everyone wants the same goal, it can make everything feel so much better. It makes the conversation more open, positive, and productive,” she adds.

Navigating the Common Assessment Challenge

One of the major challenges that many language teachers face when implementing CI (Comprehensible Input) methods is balancing this innovative approach with the need to meet departmental or district requirements, particularly in relation to common assessments.

Ashley openly admits that this was a tricky area to navigate. “We had to find a way to keep pushing for language acquisition while still preparing students for the traditional assessments that were built into our system,” she explains. This meant that while the focus in her classroom was on interactive, story-based learning, there were times when the constraints of standardized tests or quizzes meant she had to adjust her approach.

In particular, vocabulary quizzes and grammar assessments posed challenges. But Ashley found creative solutions that allowed her to stay true to CI principles while meeting the demands of the curriculum. “For example, there were times when we could easily pull the vocabulary needed for the quiz from the stories and readings we were doing,” she says. But when it came to grammar, there were moments where a more direct, traditional lesson was necessary. “There were times when we needed to slow down and do a more focused grammar lesson. But even in those moments, we’d try to make it as interactive as possible.”

One of the strategies that worked for Ashley was introducing grammar patterns within the context of the stories they were already working on. Instead of a grammar lecture, she would spend a brief amount of time—usually about 5 to 10 minutes—highlighting specific structures that appeared in the stories. “It wasn’t about teaching grammar in isolation. It was about pulling it from the language they were already hearing and reading,” she says. This approach allowed students to connect grammar directly to meaningful language use.

Adapting to the System

The reality of working within a traditional grading and assessment system means that, for many teachers, CI must be adapted in some way to ensure students can meet the expectations of exams. “You still have to prepare your students for those tests. You have to figure out how to get them to perform well while also providing meaningful language experiences,” Ashley notes.

Joshua recalls the advice he received from John Bracey, “Don’t get fired.” This advice, while humorous, underscores the importance of balancing innovation with reality. “Sometimes, it’s about finding that middle ground,” Ashley says. “You have to get your students ready for the assessments, but you also have to stay true to your teaching philosophy. You can’t sacrifice one completely for the other.”

For Ashley, this balancing act involved working backward from the common assessments. She and her colleagues would review the structure of upcoming tests, ensuring that students were exposed to the necessary vocabulary and grammar points in a way that felt natural within the CI framework. “You have to think strategically,” she advises. “What do they need to be able to do on the test, and how can I get them there through the activities and stories?”

The Road Ahead: Change Takes Time

Despite the challenges, Ashley remains optimistic about the direction of language teaching. “Not everyone is going to be on board at the same time,” she says. “And that’s okay. It’s about finding your own path within the system.”

She acknowledges that moving toward a more proficiency-based grading system would be ideal, but sometimes teachers need to work within the constraints of the system. “There’s still a lot of room for growth,” she says, “and in the meantime, we need to find ways to make what we’re doing work within the existing framework.”

Do you have any recommendations specifically for teachers who might be new to CI and have a textbook?

“The first step I would recommend is finding like-minded people who are working with the same textbook as you. Whether that’s in person or through an online connection, there are lots of Facebook groups that are focused on teaching CI with [textbook name]. Find those groups, connect with those people because it’s a lot of heavy lifting at first. If you’re trying to do it by yourself, just tackle one chapter every so often because it’s a lot. But if you can find people to work with, it’s going to make that load a lot lighter.”

Meet Our Host

Joshua Cabral is the host of the World Language Classroom podcast. He has done solo and interview episodes on a variety of topics including:

• cultural topics
• using short stories
• grammar lessons and proficiency
• comprehensible input
• listening skills
• and more!!

There are so many interesting topics discussed. His podcast is in English and is great for World Language teachers. You will get a lot out of it you can apply to your Spanish class! It’s a great way to get in some PD while you’re in the car, or taking a walk as he is keeping that in mind with the average length of his episodes. It’s almost like taking an online course by having a cup of coffee and a chat with some teacher friends!

Make sure you subscribe or follow wherever you like to listen to podcasts like Apple Podcasts or Google Play so you don’t miss new episodes! 

And, if you’re looking for more new podcasts for Spanish fluency and Spanish culture, check out this list of the best Spanish podcasts for language learners.

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