EntreCulturas 1A & 1B

Spanish
EntreCulturas 1A & 1B
for Middle School
Communicate, explore, and connect across cultures

Level 1A & Level 1B / Novice Low — Novice High

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Overview

In Levels 1A and 1B, students build the language skills, personal attitudes, and cultural insights necessary to experience life "entre culturas," using Spanish to connect with people. Students learn grammar and vocabulary both inductively and deductively.

The EntreCulturas 1A /1B program is all about teaching novice students the Spanish language through the lens of interculturality, so your learners can discover appropriate ways to interact with others whose perspectives may be different from their own. This special two-book offering offers a slower pace designed for middle school or alternative scheduling.

The focus of assessment in this program measures what students can do with the language they have learned through IPAs. Analytic and holistic rubrics accompany this textbook so teachers can stay on track.

Our educator-author team considered a variety of learner and educator styles in the backward design of the series. The program integrates all of the 2017 ACTFL World-Readiness Standards, and aligns with or exceeds every state's language standards. Content includes IB® and AP® task types and themes without compromising on our commitment to empowering each learner to communicate in the real world. Units are clearly organized with ample print and online student and teacher support, as well as with instructional strategies and support offered in the textbook, on the Learning Site, and in a constantly growing community of proficiency practitioners.

Features

  • Most middle school instructors cover less material in a single year than at the high school level. For this reason, we have published Level 1A and 1B. To help middle schoolers as they return to school after summer break, Unit 3 from 1A is reviewed at the start of 1B.

  • EntreCulturas nurtures your learners' interculturality by layering in reflection on the products, practices, and perspectives of Spanish-speaking communities, as well as how diverse language, culture, geography, and environments affect the world around them.

  • Can-do statements in each unit of EntreCulturas show learners a direct connection between tasks and what they are aiming to be able to do in Spanish. They also support learners' social and emotional learning in developing skills and attitudes within the five dimensions of CASEL's Instruction and Classroom Climate Core (the CASEL 5).

  • The EntreCulturas series is chock-full of authentic resources, like podcasts, news stations, video bloggers, and more. The resources are unit-aligned and taken from across the Spanish-speaking world.

  • EntreCulturas contains performance-based formative and summative assessments throughout each level. We also provide loads of teacher supports to foster your success, including assessment guidelines, rubrics for IPAs, and analytic and holistic rubrics, and more.

  • EntreCulturas fully aligns with ACTFL's World-Readiness Standards and incorporates the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements, performance descriptors, and proficiency guidelines.

  • The EntreCulturas series includes AP® and IB themes from the very beginning. and teacher resources in the front and end matter of the Teacher Edition outline AP® and IB® themes and subthemes. so you can start your learners on the right foot.

Take a quick look at EntreCulturas.

Want to learn more? Check out this expanded overview.

"I teach Spanish 1 and 2 using EntreCulturas and this is my third year using the program. All of the resources are very intuitive. It's easy for me to navigate the Learning Site and find resources that learners need for each lesson. It's easy for me to find the formative assessments, to assign them, and to adjust the attempts they get to receive a passing grade.

The learners like it a lot because it's very fresh. For example in the food unit, there is discussion around food trucks and the kids love it and it's easy for them to relate. Something that hit me and that I love about the family unit is how there are nontraditional families represented. It's easy for my kids to look at the images and see people who look like them. "

Interview with Stephanie Shepherd

ACTFL 2019

I love how Wayside Publishing honors the Hispanic community in the United States of America in their Spanish language textbook series, EntreCulturas. It's refreshing. It’s good when the first, second and third things you see in the table of contents are related to culture instead of grammar. Great job!

Diego Ojeda

Educator,

The activities in EntreCulturas are so adaptable. You can look at the group of students in front of you in the classroom and ask, "how much do I want to extend this activity, and what are my learners getting out of it?" and if they're getting a lot out of it , I continue. If they're not, there are endless additional activities that will resonate and can be adjusted to the needs of learners in your classroom using techniques that are already in our toolbag as teachers.

Megan Hipple

Spanish Teacher, Maryland

With units built around rich cultural topics and compelling essential questions, EntreCulturas and EntreCultures are the perfect fit for our IB Middle Years Programme. We love the focus on development of both language and cultural proficiency and the wide range of communicative learning activities that work as well in middle school as they do for high school learners.

Molly Wieland

K-12 WORLD LANGUAGE AND IMMERSION COORDINATOR, HOPKINS MN

Each book comes with a subscription to Learning Site®

The Interactive Digital Textbook

Your FlexText® is the page-by-page digital version of the textbook and is available through your Explorer® class or the FlexText® Library link on your Dashboard. Don't want to bring home your textbook? No problem! Flextext® is available wherever there is internet access.

A Community Bulletin Board

Learners and teachers alike use the Classroom Forum anytime as their online community bulletin board. Teachers love posting lesson openers, polls, links to external resources, and more. And students can comment, exchange GIFS, and upload audio, videos, and photos.

Learning to hold a conversation

Mock conversations with pre-recorded conversation prompts challenge your learners to hone their conversational skills. Learners record themselves replying to comments and questions, and the recorded conversations can be added to their portfolio as an artifact.

Tracking Their Own Progress

Online student portfolios follow learners from unit to unit, level to level. Students can upload evidence of what they can do in the language - activities, quizzes, audio files, PowerPoint and Word files, and more. This allows them to set goals and reflect on their progress related to Can-Do Statements.

Efficient, Integrated Grading

Use the online calendar to remind students of upcoming assignments and deadlines, assign tasks to specific learners or an entire class, and more. Explorer® lets you know when your students complete their work and alerts students as soon as you’ve graded. Grade each quiz question response without opening each question in Explorer®. Automatic grading is available where appropriate.

More Than 200 Ideas

Wayside’s Instructional Strategies Toolkit provides loads of instructional ideas and approaches that can be filtered by mode, skill, proficiency level, activity type, learning style, and more! Whether you are a new teacher or want to find new strategies, the toolkit provides built-in world language methodology and pedagogy training at any time.

Authors

Additional Resources

More from EntreCulturas 1A & 1B

Complete the EntreCulturas Collection

Textbook

EntreCulturas 1

Communicate, explore, and connect across cultures

Novice Low — Novice High
Textbook

EntreCulturas 2

Communicate, explore, and connect across cultures

Novice High — Intermediate Low
Textbook

EntreCulturas 3

Communicate, explore, and connect across cultures

Intermediate Low — Intermediate Mid
Textbook

EntreCulturas 4

Communicate, explore, and connect across cultures

Intermediate Mid — Intermediate High

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