General Advanced Placement (AP) course information: AP courses at high school are intended to be college-level coursework. AP courses cover all subject areas: social studies, math, science, English, art and world languages. Students choose to enroll in these courses. The college board determines the curriculum which is static, every class across the country covers the same information. The culminating activity for the classes is an AP exam, made by college board, in May. The students do not have to take the exam, they must pay for the exams they choose to take. The students' scores on these exams determine if they receive college credit for the AP course. Typically colleges accept scores of 3-5 points, 5 being the highest, for the exam results. 

AP Spanish Literature and Culture is a newer course within the context of the College Board.  I was fortunate enough to be the first teacher to pilot the course in my district.  Each student that enrolled in the course received a Chromebook to use during the course of the school year.  All of the works are available online and I ran a paperless classroom.    

The Advanced Placement (AP) Spanish Literature and Culture course is a survey course that covers the six AP Spanish Literature themes and the entire reading list outlined within the AP Spanish Literature Curriculum Framework. The course is conducted entirely in Spanish and covers Spanish and Latin American authors, and their works, from the medieval period to the present day. The works are presented in chronological order with the aim of integrating the historical themes and literary movements of the different time periods, and highlighting the schools of literature to which each piece belongs as well as the author’s style and the characteristics of each selection. The two main texts, Abriendo Puertas volumes I and II, provide students with the socio-cultural context necessary to fully comprehend each piece. Abridged versions of the texts are not used; the instructor provides the students with the full text in its original version. The two-semester course and its activities are intended to teach and enhance a student’s ability to acquire, identify, understand, discuss, interpret and analyze the form and content of literary works of prose, poetry, and drama along with the literary terms and conceptual aspects of art and history of the time. The lessons are designed to help students interpret the figures of speech, tone, genre, style, characters, themes, and literary symbols in an effort to develop their analytical and interpretative skills.

College Board breaks the works into Units that are chronologically organized.  The units state which literary works will be covered along with the skills covered.  

Source: AP Spanish Literature and Culture (2019)

According to the AP Spanish Literature and Culture guidelines from College Board (2010):

• The course explicitly addresses each of the six course themes: Las sociedades en contacto, La construcción del género, El tiempo y el espacio, Las relaciones interpersonales, La dualidad del ser, and La creación literaria.

• The course provides opportunities for students to discuss literary texts in a variety of interactive formats.

• The course provides opportunities for students to analyze the relevance of literary texts to historical, sociocultural, and geopolitical contexts.

• The course provides opportunities for students to learn and apply literary terminology to the analysis of a variety of texts representing different genres and time periods.

• The course provides opportunities for students to relate artistic representations and audiovisual materials to the course content.

(College Board, p. 36)

Students will have the opportunity to read the required texts and analyze them for various media platforms. Current research contents critical analysis of language and culture contribute to a transformative approach to language learning (Demuro & Gurney, 2018). Students will create content for blogs, podcasts and a mini-movie that will transform their understanding of the context of the content they are reading. Instead of rote memorization of the themes of the course, students will synthesize this information in the context of society and the geopolitical landscape of text. Moreover, students will compare the themes to current issues as well as compare them to various themes in art and music. Students will also have access to AP classroom, an online platform that assesses their comprehension/synthesis skills via formative assessments for immediate feedback.

According to Reeder & Zinke (2008):

After thematic units such as the one presented above are completed, students will have practiced variants of all tasks on the AP exam, but more importantly, they will have practiced varied formal and informal receptive and productive tasks using spoken and written modalities to satisfy diverse language functions using culturally authentic materials. The above method empowers students to engage in their own language learning in ways that increase the likelihood that they will become lifelong learners and offers the benefit of improving their academic skills and language skills while directly training them for the AP exam (p. 228).

According to Wilber & Monk (2010):

Course work in AP Spanish language and culture provides students with opportunities to develop their linguistic proficiencies across the modes of communication while engaging them in an exploration of cultural products, practices, and perspectives of the Spanish-speaking world in both contemporary and historical contexts. Course work in AP Spanish literature and culture provides students with ongoing and varied opportunities to further develop their linguistic proficiencies—with special attention to critical reading and analytical writing—and encourages them not only to understand and retell the content of the texts they read but also to relate that content to literary, historical, sociocultural, and geopolitical contexts in Spanish (p. 103).

Learning Outcomes:

According to College Board (2010) The objectives of this course are to:

• Foster students’ appreciation for the richness of the Spanish language and Hispanic literature and culture.
• Provide opportunities for students to use the three modes of communication in the process of learning how to analyze a literary text.
• Provide opportunities for student reflection on the relationship of a reading selection to its artistic, historical, social, and cultural contexts.
• As a result, the students will be prepared to take the AP Spanish Literature and Culture Exam at the end of the year. The following procedures have been set in order to attain these objectives.
• After establishing the essential questions and readings, the students are presented with activities, quizzes, and tests that link the literary works and the six AP themes and a variety of the sub-themes.
• Readings will continuously be compared and contrasted by theme, historical context, and artistic representations to help students develop an analytical understanding.
• All essays/projects will be self and peer-edited using the AP Scoring Guidelines.
• The 3 modes of communication (interpersonal, interpretive and presentational) will be emphasized throughout the course.
• All work (written and spoken) will be presented exclusively in Spanish.

(p. 1)

Typically this class is comprised of junior and senior students. Their language backgrounds differ greatly. Some of the students have studied Spanish for 3 years in high school, this being their first exposure to the language. Other students are heritage speakers who have taken 1-2 years of Spanish in school and speak it at home. The last group of students are in the Dual Language program, they have been exposed to the language since kindergarten in an educational setting. The DL students are comprised of both heritage and non-heritage speakers. Their needs in the classroom can differ greatly. The heritage speakers often need more support for grammar and spelling, while the non-heritage speakers need more assistance with vocabulary and syntax.  That being said, this course is a college-level course, it is easily differentiated for the various needs of the students depending on their language needs. 

This Module would take place at various times during the semester. The length of time will be expressed in the various activity modules. Each class period is 50 minutes long and meets daily.  AP College board is very specific regarding readings and themes to cover during the course of the year. There is a textbook provided for the course and all of the readings are available online as well.  The course is taught in chronological order of the various texts in order to better contextualize the geopolitical arena.  All of these activities are meant to serve as culminating events for the units.  Other activities will be completed prior to these assessments of comprehension to ensure the students possess the base knowledge required to complete the activities successfully.  

Essential Questions. Source: Pintrest

Essential Questions. Source: Pintrest

Essential Questions. Source: Pintrest

Essential Questions. Source: Pintrest

Essential Questions. Source: Pintrest

Source: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-spanish-literature-and-culture-course-a-glance.pdf?course=ap-spanish-literature-and-culture

The PDF contains the course at a glance which delineates the literature to be covered for the various time periods of Spanish literature.  These are the works that can potentially be on the AP Exam in May.  The course is taught chronologically through eight units.  These are determined by the College Board.  

Alicia, S. (2016, June 13).  Tutorial cómo crear un blog 2019 paso a paso - wordpress vs blogger (parte 2) [Video File].  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW4rSUadao8

AP College Board. (2019). AP Spanish literature and culture course and exam description. Retrieved from https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-spanish-literature-and-culture-course-and-exam-description.pdf?course=ap-spanish-literature-and-culture

Bachelor, J. W., & Bachelor, R. B. (2016). Classroom currency as a means of formative feedback, reflection, and assessment in the world language classroom. Online Submission, (78), 31–42. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=ED568689

Castañeda, D. (2011). The effects of instruction enhanced by video/photo blogs and wikis on learning the distinctions of the spanish preterite and imperfect. Foreign Language Annals, 44(4), 692–711. https://doi-org.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2011.01157.x

Demuro, E., & Gurney, L. (2018). Mapping language, culture, ideology: rethinking language in foreign language instruction. Language and Intercultural Communication, 18(3), 287–299. doi: 10.1080/14708477.2018.1444621

Feito, O.  (2016, May 18).  Cómo crear un podcast de éxito [Video File].  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cvxCj9xNvU

Mart, M. (2018, March 1).  Cómo edito mis videos tutoriales con iMovie Español 2018 [Video File].  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ5IK_N7vxU

Meluga23. (2019, October 30).  AP classroom tutorial [Video File].  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKDSoJzp_0w

Reeder, J., & Zinke, L. (2008). Curricular approaches and assessment strategies for AP Spanish language. Hispania,91(1), 227-229. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/2006366

Wilbur, M., & Monk, J. (2010). Meeting the challenge for curricular change in spanish language, literature, and culture. Hispania, 93(1), 101–107. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ910352