Brian Scott
Spanish Teacher
WL Consultant
PRE-AP "AP is not a class, it's a program"
I cannot stress enough the importance of vertical alignment. I have taught all levels of Spanish both Honors and Regular tracks. Having done so, it is very clear what skills need to be taught at the novice/intermediate levels so that students who choose to take AP can be highly successful. Even if students choose not to take an AP Language course they will still learn higher level thinking skills that will benefit them in other rigorous courses and into college.
Conference Presentations
Clothing is often taught in level 2 or 3. I took the unit and designed it more with the AP thematic approach. I presented this lesson at the AP Annual Conference 2014.
Scaffolding the 3 modes at all levels is crucial so that there are not gaps when students go from level to level each year. I have often heard students complain about the inconsistencies and how different Spanish 3 was from Spanish 4. I'm not saying that have to be identical but there definitely can be more cohesion. Here is a PowerPoint presentation that Ken Stewart and I gave at the 2014 ACTFL Convention.
Podcast & Audio Websites
It can be a bit more challenging to find authentic audio sources and materials that have comprehensible input for the lower levels but here are a few. Although more often than not I simply search on Youtube
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/
https://www.newsinslowspanish.com/
https://www.audio-lingua.eu/spip.php?rubrique4&lang=es
Here is the Presentation for the Summer APSI Pre-AP Workshop
This is a presentation from the 2016 Central States Conference on which I collaborated with Julie Swartzloff. It addresses the importance of scaffolding AP skills all the way down to level 1. This presentation contains some really good ideas and authentic resources for level 1 and 2.