A+ Spanish Mentor Texts for Writing - PROGRAM SAMPLER

10 Lesson Plans and Activities The A+ Spanish Mentor Texts for Writing Kits are designed to satisfy the requirements of text complexity, quality, and range dictated by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in Spanish and the Spanish Language Arts Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) standards. A comprehensive set for the instruction of the mandated genres is offered for every grade level, each containing children’s books of the highest quality, representing a wide variety of text types, themes, and cultural contexts, and spanning the recommended complexity range for the specific grade band. Each book set and the corresponding lesson plans and activities make up a complete kit that teachers can use as they implement a rigorous, standards-based literacy program in their classrooms. Writing instruction is most effective when writing is taught as a process. This writing component—aligned to the CCSS and the TEKS for Spanish Language Arts— allows teachers to engage students in numerous writing activities in order to learn the skills and strategies necessary to become effective writers. Intended Audiences The A+ Spanish Mentor Texts for Writing Kits are designed to be used in a variety of instructional settings in which Spanish is used as the primary language of instruction, such as classrooms and instructional settings with students who are primarily native or heritage Spanish speakers. The materials can also be used with English-dominant students who are learning Spanish in a variety of instructional settings where Spanish is the language of instruction, such as bilingual models, dual-language models, immersion models, and other instructional models where instruction is dependent on the student’s proficiency and literacy in the language. It is also assumed that the instructional personnel using the materials are Spanish speakers, with a level of language proficiency and literacy in the language that will allow them to use the K–5 A+ Spanish Mentor Texts for Writing Kits in a manner that is appropriate to the language proficiency, literacy, and developmental level of the students being taught with it. Integration of the Materials in the Classroom Teachers will follow the lesson plans exactly as written, or select those portions that meet their students’ instructional needs. These lesson plans may be used for both small- and whole-group instruction by selecting titles at the appropriate Fountas & Pinnell Text Level Gradient™. These materials can be integrated into a variety of instructional models that use Spanish as the language of instruction, such as bilingual, dual-language/two- way bilingual, one-way bilingual, heritage, or native speakers language arts, partial- or full-language immersion, advanced FLES programs, and other similar models. The materials are designed to be used at grade level, not by literacy or proficiency level; great care was taken to level the materials for grade levels Kindergarten through 5th grade, and to integrate texts with topics and themes common to those grade levels. Therefore, Vista Higher Learning recommends that teachers integrate the use of the A+ Spanish Mentor Texts for Writing Kits during the Spanish language arts portion of the instruction, and allocate time throughout several instructional periods to conduct the reading and writing processes and the suggested activities that appear on these lesson plans. The length of the instructional periods will depend on the time-on-task programmatically allocated to Spanish language arts during the school day. Organization of the A+ Spanish Literacy Kits As the Table of Contents (pages 2–3) clearly shows, the lesson plans in this guide are organized alphabetically by genre/text type. The Table of Contents also offers other crucial information to facilitate the instructional planning and integration of each text according to language point and writer’s craft within each lesson. Components • A set of authentic and engaging children’s books per grade for grades K–5. These texts, which students will study and emulate when creating their own pieces of writing, have been carefully How to Use the A+ SpanishMentor Texts forWriting Kits 2