One thing I love about having students do Tarea Semanal is that, sometimes, I end up getting something that I can use with future classes. I also really like it when students come up with their own ideas for assignments.
As a class, we studied and sang the song "Río Abajo" by Ana Tijoux during our Desafíos Medioambientales unit. One student liked the song so much that she asked if she could make a video to illustrate the lyrics. She did this as her tarea semanal for 3 or 4 weeks. She used WeVideo (similar to iMovie, but maybe better because it is in the cloud) and this is her final product. I can't imagine how many times she must have listened to the song in order to get the lyrics to match so well with the pictures!
I will definitely be using this video next semester when we do this unit.
On another note, I highly recommend using music by Ana Tijoux. I am a HUGE fan... for so many reasons. Her music is like poetry and her songs often have a social message. She is also a strong female role model who speaks out against the objectification of women in pop culture (teenage girls need more "cool" role models like her!). I have found that students really like her music. Some favorites have been Somos Sur, Shock, and 1977. At first it can be difficult to sing along with her songs, but once students try a few times, they really can sing along.
Many teachers are using El Internado in class, so I finally jumped on the bandwagon and have started showing it in my Cultura y Civilización class. It is something we do on Fridays as a reward for speaking a lot of Spanish during the week. It has been going really well. Students are engaged and they are hearing and reading (subtitles) real Spanish... and they are also having fun! (**Warning**Some scenes might need to be skipped and there are some "romantic situations" and profanity. I recommend a permission slip and probably only for older students.)
As we watch, I pause a lot for explanations and questions. I have created a three post-watching activities (so far). The episodes are long, so we watch 15-20 minutes and then read/answer aloud as a class. The readings are very simple and easy for the students, but all students get somethingout of it (differentiation!). Watching El Internado is an "easy day" for students, but there is a ton of learning and input happening!
There are lots of resources that other teachers have created (see below for links), but this format of watching a bit and then doing the reading activities aloud together as a class after is working very well for me and my students. Here are the post-watching readings that I have used so far. I created three of them (episodes 2-4 and I am going to start 5 and 6). Thanks to Bethanie Drew for the proofreading and enhancements to these!
Episodio 01X01 - I used Mike Peto's readings (no longer available) (the ones I created below use the same format that he used). For the first episode, I highly recommend screen shots of all the characters with descriptions of who they are (Mike also made one that you can find here (and it is free)).
There are also some Kahoots already created. Just search for El Internado, mikepeto, placido or srakjacobs. Students LOVE that game and it is a great way to review.
Update - 5/18/18 - You can find this movie on Amazon and YouTube (rent or purchase) with automatic English subtitles. You can watch it on Pantaya (paid monthly subscription) with Spanish subtitles. **Update - 1/1/16 - click here to see updated resources**
Canela is going to be a perfect addition to my (and Cristina Zimmerman's) Diversidad de la Gastronomía unit (or to anyone's "food unit"). It is a sweet movie and totally appropriate for school! It is a bit childish, but I found that if I tell them that ahead of time, they are okay with that. It is a little cursi, but contains some Mexican culture and it is in Spanish, so lots of listening practice* for students. They will definitely know what mole is after the movie. Most of the movies I show are pretty heavy, so this will be a nice change.
I created this movie guide with discussion questions. There are a lot of things that could be done with this movie, so please let me know if you have any ideas. Minutes 33:00-48:00 basically show how to prepare mole (lots of cooking vocabulary there!). If you see any typos or other corrections, please let me know... I share my material freely so don't expect perfection! :)
Also, if you teach AP, or have it in your Spanish program, I have included some pre-AP questions at the end of the guide. I was thinking about the two minute oral "comparación cultural" when I wrote those questions at the end.
Here is the synopsis taken from the website for the movie:
After her daughter’s death, Tere lost her passion for cooking and stopped working at her traditional Mexican food restaurant, El Molcajete, downtown Mexico City. Trying to save the business, Beatriz, the manager of El Molcajete, hires Rosi, a Cordon Bleu chef educated in France. But Maria, Tere’s sweet and bright grandchild, plans to make Tere go back to cook and run the restaurant, looking to put a smile on her face. Meanwhile, chef Rosi changes the menu, making it a light trendy cuisine, for that Jocelyn, a well known TV food critic, decides to go and pay a visit after she reads a review about it. When finally Tere realises that she needs to go back on business, she learns that chef Rosi is tearing into pieces the restaurant’s reputation. Maria, who loves traditional cuisine, prepares everything to proof that chef Rosi has no place at El Molcajete. The cuisine battle between Tere and chef Rosi is an epic fight not only between long-stablished Mexican food and light food, but also a struggle of family bonds, friendship, cooking secrets, flavor’s passion and more than two hundred ingredients that are needed in order to prepare Mole, a traditional Mexican sauce.
*The movie is available on Netflix. I would prefer to show it with Spanish subtitles, but the subtitles are in English. If anyone has figured out how to get Spanish subtitles on Netflix, please let me know. I also bought the DVD through Amazon, but it does not have Spanish subtitles either.
