Running head: COMPREHENSIVE UNIT DESIGN

A Comprehensive Unit Design for a Spanish II Travel Unit

Jamie Vega Ulate
University of West Georgia

Client information:

COMPREHENSIVE UNIT DESIGN

My clients name is Elsie Ratliff. She works at Lambert High School in Forsyth County
and teaches Spanish II. Her email is, elsieratliff@gmail.com. Elsie has been teaching for
Spanish for four years and has taught Spanish levels I through IV.
Instructional Problem:
Even though Elsie has taught Spanish II for four years, she is re-designing part of the
curriculum for this upcoming school year. She is going to incorporate a new unit on travel as the
intro unit in the fall. However, she has very little material to work with since she has never
taught this unit before. She knows the vocabulary she needs to teach, and realizes that it is quite
a lot of vocabulary to learn in such a short period of two weeks. Therefore, she would like visual
materials so that it helps the students acquire the vocabulary. She does not have any visuals to
use to help introduce the vocabulary or practice it. She has asked for artifacts that include the
units vocabulary. She would like one artifact to help introduce the new vocabulary and one
artifact that is a student centered project that they complete towards the end of the unit.
Description, Explanation, and Assessment Method of the re-designed lesson:
Artifact 1:
The first artifact is an EDpuzzle activity that I created using an
authentic video from Video ELE. Video ELE is a resource for
students learning the Spanish language and culture. The videos pair
perfectly with Mayers Multimedia and Personalization principles
(Clark & Mayer, 2011) and the dual coding theory. The video shows the images as the narrator is
talking about them and the narrator talks informally in the video. I decided to use this video in
EDpuzzle so that students could watch the video and answer the comprehension questions at

COMPREHENSIVE UNIT DESIGN

their own pace as to follow the segmenting principle (Clark & Mayer, 2011). The
comprehension questions break up the video into chunks so that the students so not become
cognitively overwhelmed. The video will pause and the question will appear, giving the students
as much time as they need to answer the question. The student needs to answer the question
before the video will move on. This is very helpful for students learning a new language,
especially when they have a lower proficiency, as it signals to them that what they just heard will
help them answer the question. Some students may be cognitively overloaded if they were given
a worksheet will all of the questions at one time, especially because it does not help them find
where they need to listen in order to find the answer. The video activity I created can be found at
https://edpuzzle.com/media/579270f376a37d281218300f.
Ms. Ratliff will also use the pre-training principle (Clark & Mayer, 2011) as she will give a
brief vocabulary introduction in the form of a PowerPoint story so that the students will better
recognize the new words they hear in the video. This will be beneficial since the narrator of the
video is from Spain and his accent is harder to understand than that of the teacher.
Ms. Ratliff will be able to have her students join her EDpuzzle class and therefore be able
to see their progress. She then can evaluate their answers to the comprehension questions. I
have created a rubric to grade this activity. The rubric was designed to show where students are
at in their listening comprehension skills.
Holistic Rubric for EDpuzzle video and comprehension questions
10
Student shows
a complete
understanding
of the video by
answering 14-

8
Student shows
an
understanding
of most of the
video by

6
Students
shows some
understanding
of the video by
answering 5-9

3
Student shows
limited
understanding
of the video by
answering less

0
Student did
not complete
the Ed Puzzle
activity and/or
comprehensio

COMPREHENSIVE UNIT DESIGN

15 questions
correctly.

correctly
answering 1013 questions.

questions
correctly.

than 5
questions
correctly.

n questions.

Artifact 2:
The second artifact is a student-centered project. Students
will create a poster travel advertisement using postermywall.com.
Frist, Ms. Ratliff will show students examples of travel ads both in
English and Spanish. She will discuss with them the multimedia
elements and principles used in persuasive advertising such as colors,
lines, flow, images, words, etc. (Golombisky & Hagen 2010). This

will

help students to better understand how ads are created in order to

entice people to travel to that destination. Then, she will show them
the example travel ad.
In small groups, they will discuss the aspects of the example
travel poster ad. This poster can be found at
http://www.postermywall.com/index.php/poster/view/c97acbbcbe550b420ffa5c8b9cfa127e.
What are the images of? Where are they placed? What is the title/heading of this poster? Why
are there URLs below the pictures? Then, Ms. Ratliff will discuss the issues on copyright.
Copyright:
The issue of copyright comes up for the travel poster ad project. However, this is done on
purpose and also because there was no way around it. By completing this project, it gives the
teacher to opportunity to teach students about copyright. The students will be required to cite the

COMPREHENSIVE UNIT DESIGN

sources for the images that they use. The teacher will also explain that using the images for this
project falls into the fair use of copyright since they are used for an educational purpose. They
will strictly be using the images to learn about the travel destination, practice their vocabulary,
and review their peers work to critique it. They will turn it in via a discussion forum. It will not
go anywhere on a personal website or be printed for advertisement purposes. This issue cannot
be avoided because the students are not able to travel to the destination to take their own photos.
Students will then create their own poster and will be graded using the analytic rubric below.
They will share their final products via the discussion board on the class site. Students will need
to look at and comment on at least two of their peers work.
Analytic Rubric for Travel Poster: /55 points total
15

10

5
The travel
destination is in
Costa Rica
The title is clear
and represents
the overall
poster

Costa Rica
(5 points)

Title
(5 points)

3 Activities
(15 points)

Includes at least
three activities
from vocab list,
used and spelled
correctly

Includes at least
three activities
from the vocab
list, used and
spelled correctly

Includes one
activity from the
vocab list, used
and spelled
correctly

Images
(15 points)

There are at least

three images that
represent the
message and are
in close
proximity to the
accompanying

There are at least

two images that
represent the
message and are
in close
proximity to the
accompanying

There is at least
one image that
represents the
message and are
in close
proximity to the
accompanying

0
The travel
destination is not
in Costa Rica
The title is not
clear, not
present, or does
not represent the
overall poster
Does not include
any activities
and/or they are
not from the
vocab list,
and/or they are
not used or
spelled correctly
There are not
images that
represent the
message and/or
they are not in
close proximity
to the

COMPREHENSIVE UNIT DESIGN

text.
Overall Poster
(10 points)

References
(5 points)

text.

text.

Poster is neat,
organized,
colorful

Poster may be
somewhat neat,
organized or
colorful, but
needs some
work
Reference links
are included

accompanying
text.
Poster is not
neat, and/or
organized,
and/or colorful

Reference links
are not included

Visual Literacy Competency Standards addressed:

Standard Two: The visually literate student finds and accesses needed images and visual material
effectively and efficiently.
Standard Four: The visually literate student evaluates images and their
sources.
Standard Five: The visually literate student uses images and visual media
effectively.
Standard Seven: The visually literate student understands many of the
ethical, legal, social, and economic issues surrounding the creation and use
of images and visual media, and accesses and uses visual materials ethically.
My plan addresses the standards above (ACRL Visual Literacy
Competency Standards, 2011) in various ways, but mostly in artifact two.
For the travel poster ad, students need to search for and locate images that
represent what they are going to convey in their poster (standard two).
While doing this, they are also researching the travel destination and the
activities that can be done there. As they are searching, they will be

COMPREHENSIVE UNIT DESIGN

evaluating the images to decide if they will be persuasive enough for their
travel ad (standards four and five). Then, for the images that they use, they
will need to copy and paste the URL directly beneath the image itself
(standard seven). Finally, they will be peer critiquing their classmates work
(standard four).
Reflection on the challenges of this assignment:
This was an enjoyable assignment for me. Ms. Ratliff was very easy to work with.
When she first told me that she would like more visual materials to accompany her new unit and
vocabulary list that was already set, she was very open to my suggestions. However, this was
also the hardest part of this assignment for me because she gave me very little direction in what
she wanted. In fact, she didnt give me any suggestions as to what she would like to see. We
talked about several ideas, and she ended up loving the artifacts that I created for her. Since
Spanish is also the subject that I teach, it was easier for me to come up with the materials than if
it were for a French or German class. For a future project, I would like to stretch myself and
create material for a client that is not in my same field.
References:
Association of College & Research Libraries. (2011). ACRL Visual Literacy Competency
Standards for Higher Education. Retrieved from
http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/visualliteracy.
Clark, R., Mayer, R. (2011). E-Learning and the Science of Instrcution (3rd ed.). California:
Pfeiffer.
Golombisky, K., & Hagen, R. (2010). White space is not your enemy: A beginner's guide

COMPREHENSIVE UNIT DESIGN

to communicating visually through graphic, web & multimedia design. Amsterdam:

Focal Press/Elsevier.