Movie slideshows as CI illustrated "books"

There are so many good movies out there for us Spanish teachers! Students (and teachers!) get so much from watching movies:

• Engagement is high! Everyone loves watching movies.
• Students see people, places and things of the Spanish speaking world. I teach in rural New Hampshire, so this is important!
• Students get to see the diversity from the Spanish speaking world.
• Students see tons of authentic cultural products, practices, and perspectives
• Students hear authentic Spanish with a wide variety of accents.
• Sometimes, students are reading authentic Spanish as well if the subtitles are in Spanish

In the past, I have always done comprehension questions. Students would watch parts of a movie and then answer questions for homework; and that always went well. But during the last two years, I have started to do much more with the movie and students are getting a lot more comprehensible input this way.

I (along with Elena López for Canela (now only available on Pantaya.com with a subscription) and Arianne Dowd for Diamantes Negros and 3 Bellezas) have created slideshows with screenshots and written what happens in each scene in comprehensible Spanish.

I view these big slideshows as "illustrated books" with comprehensible Spanish... but, instead of just reading and seeing images, students get the reward of seeing the video and hearing the authentic language! 

Here is part of the slideshow for Diamantes Negros:

Is this a lot of work? Heck yeah!! But if you get someone to help you, it is much easier. (Thanks Arianne and Elena!)

So far, I have done this for four movies. I have also done it for some cortometrajes, commercials, and songs, but here are the movies:

• La Misma Luna (for Spanish 1)
• Canela (for Spanish 1)
• Ladrón que roba a ladrón (Spanish 3+) (created by Arianne Dowd)
• El Tiempo de las Mariposas (Spanish 3+) (created by Arianne Dowd)
• Diamantes Negros (for Spanish 3 +) 
• 3 Bellezas (for Spanish 4 + )
• Arianne Dowd has created an amazing one for  También la lluvia and I am so excited to finally tackle that movie! (Unit packet with compiled resources here)
• Arianne Dowd also created one for El Libro de la Vida
• Cautiva (Spanish 4-5) (created by Arianne Dowd)

So, what does a unit like this look like? To start the unit, we go over the Essential Questions of the unit and I explain what the evaluaciones will be. During the unit, students will do lot of activities related to the theme of the movie, including: vocabulary related activities, singing songs or doing song-related activities, reading articles about related real-world issues (immigration, human trafficking in soccer, or la escasez in Venezuela), and/or watching real videos related to the movie.

Here is what we do with the slideshow and the text from the slideshow (it is pretty basic and not that revolutionary):

• In my class, students sit in groups of 3-4. (I decide on the groupings and change them every 2 weeks.)
• I project the slideshow on the big screen and designate one student to be the slide changer. S/he clicks when the talking stops or when I say, "clic."
• Each day, in their groups, students take turns reading the "story" aloud. 15-20 (sometimes more) slides. This is really good, particularly for upper level students, because I want them talking a lot! 
• For my lower level students, I start by reading the slideshow to them and then might gradually have them read in groups, depending on the level and the culture of the class.
• There are also discussion questions embedded in the slideshows, so they talk about those. 
• As they read, I might check for comprehension and/or ask questions that are not on the slideshow.
• If there is new vocabulary and/or grammatical structures, I talk about those to make sure everyone understands. Some would call this pop-up grammar (still teaching grammar, just in a different way).
• Then we watch that segment of the movie. Subtitles would be in English or Spanish, depending on the level and the movie.
• We continue to do this over the course of 5-7 (or more) days until we finish the movie. I should mention that I have 84 minutes classes.
• For homework, students have to reread what we read in class, but have to fill in the blanks (see pages 27-35 of this También la lluvia unit packet for an example). The point of this is to review what we read and to acquire and/or review vocabulary and/or grammatical structures.

I have had a lot of success with this style unit and I hope to create more... or use similar units created by other teachers, like Arianne's También la lluvia unit! Here is my unit packet for my AP class. I compiled some of her resources, along with some from Karen Goering and Lindsey Camacho, and I created some interpretive reading activities with related articles.

So, if anyone else is interested in collaborating on taking screenshots ("command + control + shift + 4" on a mac copies a screenshot right to your clipboard and then you can paste it into the slideshow), I recommend reaching out to other teachers and sharing the work! I hope to create something for my level 2 class in the future. I tried to do that with Diamantes Negros, but the language got too complex.

One more thing... a Seminario Socrático has been a fantastic end of unit speaking evaluation. Arianne Dowd also shared some ideas about how she does it on her blog.