Melissa when I taught in less friendly domains (buildings in which the department hadn’t turned yet) I always made sure I used my thematic units. It was purely for show, because we can’t learn languages from lists of words, but it did shut up the memorizer kids and the parents of kids who think that learning is memorizing and it also impressed the largely clueless admins.
Here are some links you may wish to explore. Even though it is now February, you could maybe synch it with list of words given you by your colleague today that she wants your kids to know by Spanish 3.
I also have CDs that go with these. I can send you one and then you can copy them and hand them out to your kids and make them study them at home and you can then give written tests (sample in French in one of the links below) or you can even make the kids listen to the CDs while studying the words and then give an auditory recognition vocab test where you say the word and they write it down in English. You can get real nutty with the vocabulary all of a sudden and then your colleagues will think that you have seen their light and be very happy with you, the vocabulary teacher. But since the kids would be studying the words at home, you would be free to do mostly CI in class, maybe teaching verb charts on Friday like someone said in this discussion.
Thematic Unit Sample Letter to Parents re