Philip M. Donley, Ph.D.
Vistas Co-Author
Austin Community College
Austin, Texas

General Course and Lesson Planning Suggestions
If I were teaching VISTAS in a two semester configuration with five contact hours per week, I would probably want to cover nine lessons each semester and allot eight to 10 days to each lesson, depending on the total number of contact hours available per semester. For example, if each semester lasted 16 weeks, with a total of 80 contact hours, I would devote eight or nine hours to most lessons and 10 hours to lessons that contain material that students traditionally find challenging (e.g., ser and estar in Lección 5, preterite vs. imperfect in Lección 11).

Preparing a Lesson Plan
With five contact hours per week, I would have plenty of time to cover each lesson in the textbook while making ample use of the ancillary program. The lesson plans in the 2-semester, 4 contact hours section of this website are an excellent example of how to prepare lesson plans using the various components of the VISTAS program. I would use these lesson plans as a model, realizing that with five contact hours per week, I probably would have slightly more class time available to work through the video modules, work through and expand on the Contextos and Estructura activities, practice the four skills in the Adelante section, and explore the Hispanic world in the Panorama section.