ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses practical strategies for designing a content-based thematic unit’s “content nucleus,” which includes a set of architectural elements that root the unit in a basis of nonlinguistic content and will later serve as a compass for integrating language. There are four main sections. In the first section, thematic unit planning is discussed, with a call to emphasize critical thinking by moving beyond intellectually anemic topic-based planning. In the second section, the process of content research is introduced, which involves seeking out information about chosen themes from a variety of sources, notably authentic texts in the target language. In the third section, popular unit-level planning tools called essential questions and enduring understandings are described. Finally, in the fourth section, the chapter concludes with a discussion of summative assessment planning.
