Hello friends! It’s been a while since we’ve posted anything here, and I just want to say: WE MISS YOU. We miss this community and we miss sharing our journeys with you! It has been an incredibly challenging past year and a half. The summer was not enough to recover from the ridiculousness of last year, and this year has been surprisingly one of the most challenging years I’ve ever faced. I hope to get back to posting here regularly, but for now, I wanted to drop this quick update.
An overview of our curriculum for 9th, 10th, and 11th grade heritage
Last year, due to unexpected staffing changes, I was asked to teach the 9th grade heritage class at the last minute. If you are familiar with my teaching experience, you know that I taught that class for many years and actually originally wrote the curriculum for it. However, since we are now using a heavy literacy curriculum, it was the first time I’d taught it with the new curriculum. On top of the many challenges of teaching with COVID, it was a challenging year, indeed. However, it was a great chance for me to understand what my students learn in 9th grade and how that supports and spirals into what I’m teaching my 10th and 11th grade heritage students, and that part was extremely helpful. I continue to be really thankful for the writing unit progressions and thoughtfully developed units from Heinemann (linked above) that have helped me become the literacy teacher I always wanted to be, but didn’t know how to be.
I was originally on deck to teach both the 9th, 10th, and 11th grade heritage classes this year (whew!) but I’m very thankful we have hired such a wonderful friend and colleague who was eager to work with heritage learners and will take on the 9th grade class this year. This semester, I’m teaching the 10th grade class and supporting her as she teaches 9th grade; next semester, I will teach the 11th grade class (we’re on block).
This post was important to share just to provide an overview of what our program looks like and how it spirals. My favorite part is that students are doing all types of writing (narrative, informative, argumentative) every year, and I LOVE the topics because they have allowed my students to dig in and *want* to persevere through the unit, making engagement and ownership so much higher. I am looking forward to blogging briefly about each of the units mentioned in the chart and I will link the posts here when ready.
We’re rooting for you, friends. I hope you are taking care of yourselves this year and giving yourself (and your students) so much grace and love as we continue to live through this very challenging time.
With love,
Adrienne
Adventures in Heritage Teaching 
Thank you so much! I have been creating our school’s Heritage curriculum based on parts of what I gathered from your AWESOME online conference this summer, your curriculum bundle and Profe Nygaard’s- (our school had purchased both curriculums) but I really want to purchase the Heinemann curriculum as well. I see you linked the 5th grade curriculum for 9th grade. I have mixed grades this year (9,10 and 11th graders) in my small Heritage class, and we haven’t had a heritage class for the past two years. I am NOT an ELA teacher -& I am a TOTAL newbie to teaching Heritage … I am also teaching Spanish 1 using SOMOS this year. Thoughts or recommendations on which of the two series to purchase? (5th or 6th grade Heinemann)? Thanks for any feedback!
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Hello! The 6th grade units would be accessible for that mixed class, but I think the 5th grade units are a great precursor and worth your time. So both would work, but I think 5th is worth doing. The 6th grade argument one is literary essay so the 5th argument was a great unit to make sure they got, if that makes sense.
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