La Niña... and a template for any Spanish television series

As Spanish teachers, we (and our students) are so fortunate to have soooo many fantastic series in Spanish! I have used El Internado and Gran Hotel in class an love both of those! I have also created, with Bethanie Drew and Mike Peto, extensive guides for both of those shows.

I love using those guides, but I have found that after a certain point with my upper level students, the reading guides are not as necessary, so I am going to try something new with the series La Niña. If you are not familiar with the series, here is a summary:

'La Niña' es una historia basada en hechos reales que cuenta la vida de una niña reclutada a la fuerza por la guerrilla y quien vivió de primera mano el horror de la guerra. Luego de muchos años sale de la agrupación armada para emprender un camino de regreso que no le será fácil cuando inicie el proceso de reintegración a la sociedad y deba enfrentarse con el rechazo de muchos, incluyendo su propia familia.

My first unit in Cultura y Civilización (starting a week from Monday) is based in Colombia. I am so looking forward to using this unit based around the Carlos Vives' song and music video "Pescaíto." It is a positive view of Colombia (so positive in fact, that I recently bought tickets to go to that region this summer!) and has some wonderful cultural extensions.

But, after some communications with Michelle Metcalfe, @michellewestvan, and Gustavo Verzbickis, @gverzbickis, I have decided to add some episodes of La Niña to that unit. (Note: This series, in my opinion, is best for older students.) We will probably watch in 15-20 segments 3-5 times a week in class, for 2-3 weeks. We will watch with Spanish subtitles. Each episode is 45 minutes long.

I don't have the time (or the energy) to create those extensive reading guides (but if anyone else does, I would be willing to pay for your time and energy), so instead I created this doc (free) that I will use to introduce the show. I also created a basic Edpuzzle to do after they read my summary about the series.

The doc also includes activities for students do do during and/or after they watch the episode.  These are the things they will do for each episode:

• Read a summary - I will translate the summaries from Netflix for each episode.
• Vocabulario Nuevo - Students will watch with Spanish subtitles.
• Una o Dos Partes Importantes del Episodio
• Dos Personajes y Descripciones de Ellos 
• Dos Preguntas - These can be wonderment questions or things they don't understand.
• Predicciones - There is a chart that explains the future tense.
• ¿Qué harías tú si fueras una persona del programa? - There is a chart that explains the future tense.

This template could be used for any show. 

I think I will add this to my Tarea Semanal options!