Excitement, engagement, suspense, and anticipation... La Casa de la Dentista!

Have you seen the new movie "It" yet? I did! It was scary, but very engaging! 


Wouldn't it be fantastic if we could bring that type of excitement, engagement, suspense, and anticipation into our classrooms?!? The movie "It" would be totally inappropriate for school and for Spanish class... but maybe with Sr. Wooly's new graphic novel La Casa de la Dentista, we can bring some of that excitement, engagement, suspense and anticipation (that those teenage brains love and crave) into our Spanish classrooms! I just got the book and read it to my nine year (may not be good for all nine year olds) old son and we both loved it! It is suspenseful and full of surprises (I won't give anything away here), but you can see a preview of the first 18 pages here.

Not only is it a good, suspenseful story, but it is beautifully illustrated, which also adds to the engagement factor! 

As I read it, I thought of so many possibilities for this book! Since it is a graphic novel, I will be free to add a ton of vocabulary and questions that are geared towards the proficiency level of my students. I am going to use it with Spanish 1 second semester, but I am also going to use it with my Sobrenatural unit (which needs some revamping) in my Cultura y Civilzación (4/5/6) class this semester.  

I am still making my way through Sr. Wooly and Carrie Toth's "How to teach a graphic novel?" which will be super helpful as I try to teach with a graphic novel for the first time. Also, since I bought 30 copies, I will get the Teacher's Guide too. That will be another big help!

I have mentioned Sr. Wooly's site (and the wonderful nuggets that students learn from and like so much that they ask for more) before, but I want to recommend again that people get a subscription. It might be the best deal ever for Spanish teachers!! The amount of things that you get on that is site is unbelievable. And it is a fantastic bridge if you are starting to do more CI. Arianne Dowd and I are presenting a workshop at MaFLA on October 26th and here is one of our slides (we will share the rest later) that illustrates some units you could use Sr. Wooly materials for: