A repost from when I was in India:
I’m meeting with my curriculum director, who wants to talk about vertical alignment of foreign languages among the 10 teachers in our K-12 program here at the American Embassy School.
If anyone is interested I am sharing what I sent her in preparation for our meeting later today:
Jessica I wrote out some thoughts on Scope and Sequence and am attaching the Harrell document on S/S that I attached in an earlier email just so that you have them in the same place.
It would be disingenuous for me to suggest in our meeting that Scope and Sequence documents have any place in a language program based on comprehensible input. There is just too much distance between the research and any such document.
Anyone claiming to actually vertically articulate a position while at the same time honoring what the research says would be doing so only to please the people around them for approval. Not for one moment do I think it is possible. The magnitude of the change and the facts that the research brings (partially explained in the attached articles) are just too stupendous.
Mine is an extreme position to take, but SS docs, word lists, pacing guides, etc. affect the kids in too much of a negative way when we use them as guideposts in organizing our academic years. Those benchmarks are just tired old unused docs that bring scowls from traditional and CI teachers alike. The Coleman position (planning instruction using a traditional Scope and Sequence model) is untenable. That model is crashing down in the U.S. as we speak in a thunderous way.
Articles: