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We hope that these thematic units will provide inspiration for PreK-12 teachers who wish to explore the concept of thematic teaching for the first time. We also hope that they will provide rich content for those already committed to thematic teaching and wish to extend their understanding, skills, and thematic repertoire.

The first six units published by the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC) in 1998 – three French units and three Spanish – provided invaluable examples of thematic teaching that integrate language, culture, and subject content. They were inspired by Carol Ann Pesola Dahlberg’s “Framework for Curriculum Development” (Curtain & Pesola, 1994, p. 62). Additionally, these units were among the first published materials to relate classroom teaching to the national student standards in foreign language education (National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project, 1996). Our hope at the time was that these units would inspire the publication of many additional thematic units.

Five years later, there are still few published thematic units available to teachers. Therefore, we now publish additional thematic units to further encourage teachers to refocus and revitalize their teaching by incorporating thematic units in their own PreK-12 classrooms.

These new units all owe their inspiration to Mari Haas. Most of the authors have been in one of the NFLRC summer institutes Mari co-taught in Iowa. These include “Culture and Children’s Literature Institute of France and Mexico” (1996) or “Temas Añejos: Recurring Themes in Ancient, Colonial, and Modern Latin America” (2000). The remaining authors have been Mari’s students at Teachers College, Colombia University.

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