Secondary DLI Curricular Units

One component of CARLA’s Secondary Dual Language Immersion (DLI) initiative is to design model content-and-language integrated curricular units for Spanish secondary dual language programs that teachers can use and adapt to meet the needs of their unique contexts. The Secondary DLI initiative leader is working in partnership with practicing dual language teachers to create, pilot, and revise these materials. The completed materials are available as Open Educational Resources for DLI educators to freely use in the classroom.

Social Studies Unit: Understanding Local and National Political Interests

This curricular unit, for use in the Spanish secondary DLI social studies classroom, is focused on examining political issues that are important to the local community. It is a project-based unit in which students design, carry out, and analyze data from a political poll to understand the concerns of local constituents. 

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Social Studies Unit Materials

The materials for this unit can be found below.

Language Arts Unit: The Police Story

This curricular unit, for use in the Spanish secondary DLI language arts classroom, is a narrative fiction unit centered on detective stories. Students read and analyze an authentic detective story so they can successfully write their own narrative with a clear structure, well-developed characters, and a compelling central conflict that leads to the resolution of the crime. Embedded throughout the unit is a language focus on authors’ use of tense/aspect as a storytelling tool. 

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Language Arts Unit Materials

The materials for this unit can be found below.


If you have questions about these curricular units – or would like to work in partnership with Dr. Cory Mathieu, the initiative leader, as you teach the unit – please fill out this contact form.

All units are published with a CC-BY-NC-SA license, meaning that you can use, copy, adapt, and share them as long as you give appropriate attribution, share them using the same or similar license, and don’t use them for commercial purposes.