Another interpretive listening act. with Radio Ambulante

I have created another interpretive listening guide for the Radio Ambulante podcast titled "Recién llegados." Click here to see it (feel free to make a copy and make changes). I am going to use this with my AP class, but this would work well with a level 4 class or above. Here is a summary from the Radio Ambulante site:

This podcast goes along very well with the theme of immigration, a theme that is very relevant today. If you use the Fluency Matters novel Vida y Muerte en la Mara Salvatrucha, this would be a fantastic authentic listening accompaniment as well.

It is wonderful that Radio Ambulante provides the transcript for many of its episodes! With that transcript, I created a fill in the blanks listening guide, along with 22 questions throughout that will help break up this podcast into parts. To listen to this in its entirety in one chunk would be a bit challenging for students.

Before listening, students will read infografía that Radio Ambulante created to go along with the episode and do a cierto/falso activity to go along with it.

I am considering adding the song "Prepárame la cena" (probably my all time favorite song by them) by Calle 13 to go along with this. Read here about the campaign that they did with UNICEF against human trafficking. Here is the video:

Radio Ambulante... Interpretive Listening for AP

I have an excellent group of AP students this semester, but it is still definitely a challenge to get them prepared to take the test with only 11 weeks of class (not including our two weeks of vacation). One particular challenge is the authentic listening that is all over the AP exam (multiple choice, persuasive essay, and interpersonal conversation).

So, in order to give them more listening practice, I created this 18 page cloze packet to go along with the latest episode of Radio Ambulante. There is no word bank, but the words that they have to fill in should be relatively easy. Thankfully, Radio Ambulante shares transcripts for many of their episodes; so, no, I did not transcribe all of this! Along with filling in the blanks, students will have to answer questions as they listen.

They will also have to fill out this grid related to the Essential Questions (all taken from AP). I envision giving this for homework, probably in 6-8 minute chunks over four nights. I really like having students do authentic listening outside of class because they can take their time and go at their own pace. I encourage students to listen 2-3 times when doing authentic listening assignments.

I absolutely loved the latest episode about Nélida. Here is the summary from the Radio Ambulante website:

It touched upon so many AP themes and, to me, was a fascinating story. Even if you don't use this with your students, I highly recommend getting hooked on this podcast! There are so many interesting and thought-provoking stories. I also loved this one (among many others). 

This is the second time I have used Radio Ambulante to create a lesson/unit. Check out this one about Puerto Rico.

Seminario Socrático para discutir una película

I am finally going to try a Seminario Socrático. My AP class is just finishing this wonderful unit based around the movie "Diamantes Negros". Karen Goering's resources really helped students understand the movie and the problem on a much deeper level (scroll through here or Ctrl F "Diamantes Negros" to find activities for two articles and an interview).

Students did a lot of talking (one of my main goals) about the movie and have reviewed some grammatical structures. On Friday, they did their first Presentational Writing assessment (create by Karen Goering and adapted by me) and tomorrow (today is a snow day), they are going to discuss the movie using the Seminario Socrático format. There is so much to talk about in this movie! If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. I am really looking forward to hearing my students' thoughts and opinions about the movie.

I found this doc from AVID that explains (very thoroughly) what a Socratic Seminar is and I adapted it and translated it into Spanish. Click here to see it. I used it to explain to students what they will be doing and why. I also used the amazing Arianne Dowd's ideas to prepare students for the discussion. This document could easily be adapted to a variety of texts or movies, so feel free to make a copy and adapt.

Cuento: El Cactus

Here is a cute little video/story that I am going to use in Spanish 2. We are two weeks in to the course, so this story will be a good way to reinforce some important vocabulary in a compelling way.

Robin Boling (Thanks @soybilingual !) created the slideshow below and I adapted it a bit. I also created some activities to do before and after the slideshow. I imagine we will spend 3-4 days on this little story with a quick evaluación/pruebita (listen and choose pic, write summary, cierto-falso statements and/or answer questions) on the last day.

Here is the slideshow (click here if you want to make a copy) and here are the other activities to do before and after.