AP® Spanish Literature & Culture

All-Gender Course; Prerequisite - Successful completion of at least three years of high school Spanish required, suggested four years of high school Spanish or three years with an immersion experience;      Full-year course 
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The AP® Spanish Literature and Culture course provides a college-level survey of texts from Peninsular, Latin American, and U.S. Hispanic authors. In addition to the texts from the College Board required reading list, students will interpret the works within their social, literary, and historical contexts and consider the reasons these works remain relevant in the 21st century. Students build an understanding of form, structure, theme, and literary devices, and then analyze and evaluate the global interdependence that fosters the evolution of Hispanic and Latino literatures. The course is conducted entirely in Spanish and organized around the six themes designated by the AP® curriculum framework. This course prepares students for the AP® Spanish Literature and Culture Exam in May.
WHAT STUDENTS SAY

“I enjoyed this course and have been adequately challenged, deepening my understanding of the topics learned” 
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“I am really enjoying this course. I love how I am able to easily reach my teacher if I have a question or concern on an assignment.”
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"Ms. Allen is very accommodating and understanding and I appreciate her as an educator."

WHAT STUDENTS DO
Learning is an active process at One Schoolhouse. Students design, create and apply. And, they engage with classmates and connect with their teachers through discussions, video conferences, and projects. Specifically, in this class students will:
  • Set goals that drive their learning. Students reflect regularly on their growth, and meet on video chat with their online teacher to review progress towards their goals.
  • Have choice in how they learn new content and practice new skills. Students are given agency to determine the best ways for them to learn.
  • Apply what they are learning to the real world. Learning is meaningful and connects to concepts outside the classroom.
  • Practice constructive engagement in a diverse and changing world. Students interact with classmates from across the country and around the world.
  • Gain academic maturity. Online learning takes greater discipline and independence than a traditional face-to-face classroom. Teachers support students to build this skill.
MEET A TEACHER FOR THIS COURSE
SIGNATURE ACTIVITIES
Examples of signature activities and projects for this course are:
  • Build Context:  Students will engage in pre-reading investigation of literary movements, historical contexts and biography of authors to create a useful product for interpretation of the work and for later review.  This product can be a prezi, electronic presentation, video lecture, screencast, table, or other product the student chooses.  In some cases, the product may be shared with the class for further interaction. 
  • Collaborative Review:  Students collaborate on review sheets that include specific information about the author, his/her context and specific elements of the work.  All students must participate, and each sheet forms a portion of the review for the semester assessments and AP exams.
  • Creative Interpretations:  Students negotiate meaning through a variety of creative activities.  Examples:
    • Students draw or create a visual representation of Tenochtitlán as described by Hernán Cortés in his Segunda carta de relación.
    • Students write a thank you note from the protagonist, Lazarillo de Tormes, to one of his early masters, detailing the life skills that he learned through their time together.  These notes would recognize both the irony of the lessons learned and how Lázaro has put them to work in his adult life.
    • Students make a video or audio in which they enact a scene from El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra
    • Students write a news article or a video report about the visit of the mother and sister of the thief to the town in “La siesta del martes” 
​OUR RESEARCH-BASED APPROACH TO TEACHING LANGUAGES ONLINE
​One Schoolhouse designs competency-based courses with the student-teacher relationship as the cornerstone of our personalized pedagogy.  While students excel in our language AP courses, for many years we did not offer full sequence language courses because there was little research to support the efficacy of online language learning at the early levels.  The research shows that fewer than 1% of Americans are proficient in the language they studied in traditional classrooms. Not wanting this outcome for One Schoolhouse students, our goal is to inspire deep learning so we strive to ensure that the online learning experience increases the effectiveness of second language acquisition. In recent years, we have honed our approaches to delivering the four language competencies – reading, writing, listening, and speaking – in the online space, and have therefore endeavored to build out our Chinese, French, and Latin sequences.  The limitations of other online language programs are mitigated by the centrality of the student-teacher relationship, including interactive sessions where students speak, listen, and translate with their peers and teacher, at One Schoolhouse.  J.C. Narcy-Combes’s research on second language learning online shows that, “meaningful interaction will trigger learning processes,” which we know to be true anecdotally, and that, with intentional design, students can be taught to learn language effectively online.  Carrier et. al. have more recently shown that educational technologies and online learning are rapidly transforming second language acquisition, and that intentional practice can create a highly effective digital experience.  Because One Schoolhouse students have pathway options where they can practice in the target language at their own pace, get feedback from their teacher, interact with peers from around the country, and demonstrate their mastery through both traditional assessments and creative projects, students have the full complement of research-based learning activities in their online courses that you would expect to find in any independent school language program.  Additionally, our language teachers have advanced degrees from American universities, are trained in both their language and the best pedagogical practices for delivering language online, teach in independent schools around the US, and are AP readers.  
COURSE APPROVAL
This course is approved by the College Board and the NCAA. 

One Schoolhouse is fully accredited with the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges through December 1, 2025; we are an approved online publisher for the University of California. ​
Elizabeth Allen
she/her/hers
Language Teacher
BA Wake Forest University
MA University of Virginia