Inmigración en español 1

Many Spanish teachers have used La Misma Luna in class. It is a wonderful movie that students love. It also creates empathy for undocumented immigrants in the United States. This year and last, instead of just showing the movie, I decided to create a unit for my Spanish 1 class about immigration. It went really well!

The unit packet includes the Essential Questions, the "I can" statements for the unit, the readings that summarize the two stories (the short film and the movie), a variety of activities for the two stories, Quizlet links, and a link to a summary textivate activity.

The first story was the PBS short film "The Other Side." This short film has an excellent twist at the end; very few students knew it was coming. The video is in English, but I told the story in Spanish. I used this slideshow to tell the story. We spent a few days on this story and did some activities in the packet, including: reading, drawing, cierto/falso, and textivate (see slide 75). Students took a short quiz on that story after a few days. Throughout the unit, we also spent time learning the information on slides 4-8. The Quizlets on slide 9 helped with that. Those Essential Questions were on the test and students had to be able to answer them in Spanish (presentational writing). Here is the slideshow with some of the slides.

After that story, we moved on to the the story of La Misma Luna. I created the slideshow below to tell the story of the movie before we watched it. It has screen shots and very simple Spanish to tell the story. We watched it in segments and did some of the activities in the packet, as well as some Quizlet Live activities (embedded in the slideshow). Here is the slideshow with some of the slides.

I love doing these slideshows! The triple connection of hearing, seeing a picture, and reading is very engaging and really helps students understand the story. Lots of connections are being made! Then, they hear the authentic Spanish in the movie. We do watch the movie with English subtitles.

Our song of the week was also related to immigration. We used the song ICE El Hielo by La Santa Cecilia. This slideshow introduces them to the band. To start the week, students did the basic cloze activity and we went over the English meaning. Then, we sang it all week. Click here if you would like to make a copy of the slideshow and use it in your classroom.

I share this to help others teach in TL with comprehensible input. I am on that path, but not quite there yet! So, if you have any suggestions, let me know.