When teaching World Languages, the District Standards are based on the ACTFL World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages. These standards focus mainly on effective communication, cultural interaction, connections to other disciplines, comparing the nature of language and interaction with other communities around the world. This unit includes a little bit of all these key aspects as students will be interacting and presenting their work in Spanish, they will become more aware of the nature of the Spanish culture. Students will also learn about historical and geographical data that is relevant when reading El Poema de Mio Cid, they will transfer the values of the poem to their own experience with questions and debates. Finally, they will widen their vocabulary with new words that appear in the poem. All in all, students are expected to broaden their horizons when working this unit.
The standards on which this unit is based on are:
1.2 “Students understand and interpret written and spoken language on a variety of topics”.
As far as written language is concerned, students will work with excerpts from the poem to interpret its meaning and will write an essay at the end of the unit summarizing and giving their opinion. The spoken language skills will be worked through debates and questions relating to their own experience. In addition, they will watch videos on historical and cultural background information that will require their interpretation as well.
2.2 “Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the products and perspectives of the culture studied”.
Students will write a final essay giving their opinion about a fundamental question worked throughout this unit (El Cid: Myth and legend or history?). In this essay they will have to include all the perspectives they have been studying throughout the unit to show their understanding.
