A+ SL White Paper

“El hábito de leer no se adquiere si él no promete y cumple placer”. —Gabriela Mistral K–5 l iteracy K itS Santillana’s K–5 A+ Spanish Literacy Kits offer a well-balanced library of authentic Spanish titles, 50% informational texts and 50% literary texts, with Lesson Plans and Activities to help you meet the standards mandated by your state in your classroom. They include authentic works in various genres, both literary and informational (folktale, myths, narrative, poetry, drama, literary nonfiction, biography, etc.), written at various levels of text complexity and they are designed to correlate with both language arts and content-area standards. The lessons are designed to help teachers address the six instructional shifts demanded by College and Career Readiness Standards. The first three of those shifts—balancing literary and informational text, knowledge in the disciplines, and staircase of complexity—are addressed through our choice of texts, while the other three—text-based answers, writing from sources, and building academic vocabulary—form the basis of the lesson plan. Each lesson begins with vocabulary development activities, based on Robert Marzano’s six-step model for developing academic vocabulary (Marzano, 2010) and Beck, McKeown and Kucan’s model of robust vocabulary instruction (2013). Pre-reading activities are designed to build and informally assess background knowledge, and the reading activities are designed to develop comprehension strategies through differentiated instruction (Tomlinson, 1999). Post-reading activities include a variety of research-based, high-yield instructional strategies, including graphic organizers (Marzano, Pickering & Pollock, 2001), as well as content-area connections and opportunities for students to share their knowledge through oral and written activities. Throughout the process, teachers are encouraged to use conversation as a means of informal assessment, and to take advantage of opportunities to clear up misunderstandings and deepen understanding (Frey, Fisher &Nelson, 2013). Students are also given opportunities to demonstrate mastery of vocabulary and comprehension through activity pages designed for each text.