Pedagogy

This page contains pedagogical resources from professional development models, curriculum ideas, and websites that focus on pedagogy approaches for teaching and learning Spanish as a Heritage Language.

Professional Development

• NEW!  Professional Development Module Series. TeCHS/COERLL
• Teaching Heritage Languages: An Online Workshop. An online workshop for teachers interested in teaching Heritage Languages. Brought to you by the NHLRC).
• WPHL – Who Are Heritage Language Learners A very useful handout created by Alberta Gatti and Teresa O’Neill for the CILC Project that defines Heritage Language Learners from different points of view. It highlights some instructional implications for Heritage Learners as well. Important for the development of Heritage Learner Curriculums and Spanish teachers getting introduced into the Heritage Learner world.
• Teaching Spanish as Heritage Language for the first time: ten suggestions. Are you teaching a heritage language course for the first time? Do not panic! Here are ten useful tips from Dr. Pascual y Cabo & Dr. Vergara Wilson to get you started.
• Teaching Heritage Languages: An Online, Self-Paced Workshop from the National heritage Language Resource Center. Modules 1 and 2 are self-paced online tutorials that are designed for teachers of world and heritage languages. As you complete the first module, you will gain a better understanding of important differences between heritage language learners (HLLs) and foreign language learners (FLLs). In the second module, you will learn about strategies for working with heritage language students in the classroom. Module 3 focuses on issues that are language specific.
• Spanish Corpus Proficiency Level Training (SPT) This website contains videos of Spanish learners, including many heritage language learners, and training modules to learn to understand different features of the learners’ language and rate them according to their proficiency.
• Understanding Heritage and Domestic Language Learners presents ideas for differentiated instruction in mixed classes with heritage and L2 learners from CALPER. Kimberly Adilia Helmer describes the first year of a teacher-founded charter high school and presents a case-study of compulsory Spanish heritage language instruction with two Spanish-language teachers, one English dominant and the other Spanish dominant.
• Multiliteracy and Multimodality in the SHL Classroom. Activity manual describing the integration of “Learning by Design” pedagogy into a SHL intermediate-level courses at a Texas university. The manual was presented during the 7th National Symposium of Spanish as a Heritage Language in 2020; it includes theoretical background, analytical exercises and classroom multimodal activities.

Curriculum

• Information about the Seal of Biliteracy, an award given by a school, district, or state in recognition of students who have studied and attained proficiency in two or more languages by high school graduation.
•  OER Heritage Speakers , is a curriculum developed by Margarita Casas (Linn-Benton Community College). The curriculum includes materials for 4 thematic units.
• Clase modelo para heritage language workshop (Carlos R. Naranjo, Rusquin Chádez, Tatiana Ferrer, Edgar Vargas & Rosalva Alamillo). This was created during COERLL’S 2016 Heritage Spanish Workshop
• Tech for Language teaching and Learning is a website that contains suggestions for language teachers to incorporate technology into the classroom. The website was designed by Dr. Henshaw, director of Advance Spanish at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
• Nancy Fret’s personal website has several resources for heritage Spanish teachers.
• Selecting and Adapting Materials for Online Language Teaching and Learning is a set of modules by the NFLRC at the University of Hawai`i.
• Innovative Strategies for Heritage Language Teaching: A Practical Guide for the Classroom This book address new perspectives and orientations on designing Heritage Learning programs, assessing progress and proficiency, transferring research knowledge into classroom practice, and the essential question of how to define a heritage learner. Articles offer analysis and answers on multiple languages, and the result is a unique and essential text—the only comprehensive guide for heritage language learning based on the latest theory and research with suggestions for the classroom.
• Practical Advice for Teachers of Heritage Learners of Spanish This collection of personal essays addresses how to teach heritage learners of Spanish.
• These Translanguaging Guides from the CUNY-NYS Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals offer dozens of strategies and approaches for teachers working with emergent bilingual students at all grade levels and in all program models.
• The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges has a dedicated page of OER syllabi and lesson plans for Spanish education in general. There is also a link for Heritage Language OER more specifically. These resources were compiled as part of ASCCC’s “Open Educational Resources Initiative.”

Focus Groups, Associations and Centers

• Teachers of Spanish Heritage Speakers Facebook group
• Teachers of Spanish as Heritage Language in the US Facebook group
• ACTFL Spanish for Heritage Learners Special Interest Group
• Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) Spanish Heritage forum
• Spanish heritage Yahoo group 
• The National Heritage Language Resource Center (NHLRC) at the University of California, Los Angeles, develops pedagogical approaches to teaching heritage language learners, both by creating a research base and by pursuing curriculum design, materials development, and teacher education.
• The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) has some training units to practice analyzing Spanish learner language, including heritage learner language. This site could be useful for instructors who want to learn more about heritage learner language and compare it to the language of 2 learners.

If you’d like to share a resource with the Heritage Spanish community, please contact Marco Pevia at techs.edu.team@gmail.com.