The 6 AP Spanish Themes

If you are new or thinking about starting an AP class, you might wonder about the 6 AP themes. What are they? Do I need to teach them? How do I teach them? Do I need a textbook?

If you don’t have an AP Spanish class at your school yet, take a look at my posts on how to get one started here:

How To Become an AP Spanish Teacher: Part 1

How To Become an AP Spanish Teacher: Part 2

6 AP Spanish Themes

Here are the 6 AP Spanish themes, in the order that College Board Suggests that you teach them. *Hint- I change up the order every year… it doesn’t have to go in this order!

1. Families in Different Societies

2. The Influence of Culture and Language on Identity

3. The Influence of Art and Aesthetics

4. How Science and Technology Affect Our Lives

5. Factors That Influence Quality of Life

6. Environmental, Political and Societal Challenges

What AP Spanish Themes Are Required?

Theoretically, all 6 AP themes are required to be taught before the AP Exam. When you create your course audit, or syllabus, that will be submitted for approval to College Board, you must include all 6 themes.

To be honest, I sometimes struggle to fit in all 6 themes before the exam. I teach in the northeast. We start school at the end of August and contend with snow days, and compared to schools that start much earlier and don’t ever have snow days, we have far less teaching days before the exam.

I used to stress about getting to all 6 AP Spanish themes before the exam, but there’s good news! Even if you don’t fully cover all 6 themes, there are no “facts” that have to be memorized to do well on the exam. Unlike History or Chemistry, the AP Spanish test is more about skills and proficiency and less about “content”.

So, What Do I Teach, Exactly?

When you start an AP Spanish Language and Culture class at your school, you will be required to create a course audit (syllabus), or use one of the exemplars that College Board provides.

As part of this course audit, you will select some Essential Questions for each unit. You can develop these questions yourself, or use the ones from the College Board examples. Some people choose to adopt a textbooks geared towards this course and let the resources in that book guide their Essential Questions.

There’s no right or wrong way to choose Essential Questions. But I suggest using this opportunity to your advantage! It’s rare that teachers have a lot of say or input into things… and in this case, you have complete control to design your course and focus on topics that interest you and your students!

I chose to NOT use a textbook to guide me and wrote my course audit on my own. The 6 AP Spanish themes are very broad and are purposely designed to easily overlap. For example, if you are talking about how families live in one part of the world, that might naturally lead to challenges they face that could be environmental, societal or political in a nature. If the challenge is environmental, that could lead to a discussion on how science and technology is or is not helping! My point is that I had creative freedom to choose my essential questions, and those drive the topics you will cover with your students. It is a great experience to design your own course!

Do I Need A Textbook To Teach the AP Spanish Themes?

The short answer is No. You do not need a textbook to teach this course. To be honest, my first few years of teaching the course, I had a textbook. I used it sometimes. But a lot of times, I didn’t like having a textbook. The readings were sometimes boring or too long. The comprehension questions were not in the style that I would use. Students could not highlight or make notes, because the books belonged to the school. And then…. Covid hit. We were sent home, and no one had their textbook at home, including me!

It was at that time that I made the full switch. I used the Essential Questions that I created for my course audit, and filled out my lesson plans with my own creations. It was a LOT of work, and it was a compilation of YEARS of work, to be honest.

My full year curriculum and test prep is for sale in my TPT store. And I have two more things to say…… 1) It’s much cheaper than a textbook series. 2) Had I known that TPT existed BEFORE I did all this work myself, I would have happily purchased materials to use with my students! It would have saved me HOURS of time and stress. Here it is if you want to take a look- even if it’s just for ideas.

My curriculum is based on timely authentic sources that I curated myself to make sure that the length of articles or videos is appropriate, that the sources are interesting and comprehensible, that the follow up questions and activities are appropriate and helpful, etc. I will admit that I am a bit Type A when it comes to my lesson plans and activities for students, but I feel really good about what I have and what we do in my AP class!

One caveat: Though you do not NEED a test-prep book, I find it really helpful. If you were going to ask your district to purchase something for you, that’s what I would ask for. If you don’t have the budget for a test-prep book, AP Classroom has practices and videos for students to use. In my curriculum I offer some recommendations for the test-prep books I’ve used and liked!