New Story: "Álvaro tiene un problema"

I am on a roll with these Story/Song of the week scripts/activities! ! I love telling students a story based on a song/music video and then letting them watch the video as a reward for good listening. (And I am also showing them the diversity of the Spanish speaking world and exposing them to lots of cultural Ps.) It is such a good way to give my students input. And it is a fantastic way to start class on a Monday! 

You can find my next story, and accompany activities, based on the new song/video "La Cintura" by Álvaro Soler here on TPT. I am sure this one will be a hit! And I am sure many boys will be able to relate to Alvaro ;) 

In Spanish 1, we have done one of these activities for the first seven weeks that we have had class. You can find the story scripts and links to other activities here (we have done the first seven). I have told the story on Monday and then we do other activities throughout the week (I have 85 minute classes, so this is one of the many things we have going on.) My Spanish 1 students are doing so well with this routine of activities. They are engaged and acquiring a ton of Spanish! 

After we do the Story Listening activity, I follow it up with a variety of other input activities throughout the week, including: 

• Quizlet Live with Vocabulario Importante
• Textivate! 
• Reading Activities with the story script (fill in the blanks, comprehension questions, read and draw)
• Translate parts of the story (for shorter stories, and always Spanish to English)
• Cloze activity with the song lyrics
• Agárralo with cierto/falso statements (AKA "the marker game")
• Quizizz
• Listen and act
• Kahoot Jumble
• Other reading activities like: Who is it? Who would say it? or Cierto/Falso

Update (4/2/18): I created this slideshow to tell the story with some visuals. The videos on certain slides are set to just show certain parts that illustrate the text. Also, the text shows up after a click, so you can say the story and then they can see the text if/when you want them to. It also includes some recent videos from Instagram! You can get access to make a copy and edit this presentation here.

Update Spring 2019 - My students made their own version of the video:

Un Besito Más... again

What a powerful and heartbreaking video! As a runner (whose mom still supports her at races) this video really struck me. Arianne Dowd and I created some free resources (here) and I used it in my Cultura y Civilización course last semester in my immigration unit. 

But, now, I am in the middle of my inmigración unit in Spanish 1, so I have made something for Novices. I wrote up a basic story about the video. You can find the story, a basic cloze activity, and a translation of the song here for free. 

I will probably use this story for a Story Listening Activity first, and then do the activity sheet and some of these activities: Textivate and Quizizz.

I love doing this unit in Spanish 1. This is a mostly freshmen class and they really don't know much at all about immigration. By using engaging CI stories IN SPANISH (with some facts in Spanish along the way), my big goals for this unit are the following:

• I want students to understand that immigrants (documented and undocumented) come to the U.S. for a variety of reasons, including: for work, for family, for more opportunities, for safety, and for many other reasons. 
• I want students to have empathy for undocumented immigrants.
• I want students to know that immigration is very complicated and it is not possible to "deport them all" (a common comment).
• I want students to understand that most undocumented immigrants are contributing to our society and our culture. 

So, how to do this??? I am using three stories: ICE El Hielo, Un Besito Más, and The Other Side; and one movie: La Misma Luna. And sprinkling in some factual information throughout the unit... all in Comprehensible Spanish! So, yes, it is possible to teach this in the TL.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

I am sharing all of this for FREE, but if you think this (or anything else that you got here for free) is useful and has saved you some time, feel free to give back here in Radiohead style (click here to see what I mean by Radiohead style). 

ICE El Hielo... again

I have blogged about using the song and video "ICE El Hielo" a lot because I think it is such a good song to include in an immigration unit. It shows a lot of cultural practices and perspectives related to immigration and it, usually, leads to students having empathy for undocumented immigrants. 

So, as I am about to start my immigration unit in Spanish 1 (it mostly revolves around the short PBS film "The Other Side" and the movie "La Misma Luna"), I have created a Story Listening script to tell the story of "ICE El Hielo". I will tell students the story in a "Story Listening" style (so that means, I won't pre-teach vocabulary before I tell the story, but rather, I will make it comprehensible while I tell the story) and then they will watch the video. You can find the script and activities here (of here if you think this is all worth $2.00 :) ). 

(Side Note: I have been having a lot of success with Story Listening in Spanish 1! I highly recommend it! Also, I am not an expert and I am pretty sure teachers might not have "scripts" when they are doing this, but it has helped me as a beginner.)

In addition to the Story Listening script, I have created some other activities to do with the story after I have told it in a "Story Listening" style. These are the follow up activities that I have created:

• Quizlet Live - Vocabulario Importante
• Textivate (Text and Matching vocabulary -----> many activities!)
• Textivate Sequence (this is what my students will do)
• Cloze activity and translation for song
• A reading and answering questions activity (pages 3-7)
• Quizizz (cloze activity with story - could be used as in class activity, homework, or a quick assessment)
• Kahoot Jumble
• A possible quiz (pages 8-10)

Also, if you are looking for another really good song about immigration, "Un besito más" is excellent (and you can find free resources here).

Story Listening Script for "ICE El Hielo"

Hay una mujer. Se llama Eva. Tiene treinta y siete años. Ella es de El Salvador, pero vive en California. Eva trabaja en un restaurante. Todos los días se despierta temprano, prepara el desayuno para su hija, sale de su casa, y va al trabajo.

Hay una chica. Se llama Marta. Tiene quince años. Ella es de El Salvador, pero vive en la California. Es la hija de Eva. Es una estudiante muy buena. Todos los días se despierta temprano, come el desayuno, sale de su casa, y va a la escuela. Sueña con asistir a la universidad.

Hay un hombre. Se llama José. Tiene cincuenta años. Él es de México, pero vive en California. José tiene dos trabajos. Es jardinero y trabaja en un restaurante. Los jardines donde José trabaja son como Disneylandia, son muy bonitos. Trabaja en el mismo restaurante de Eva. José tiene esposa, pero ella vive en México. Todos los días se despierta temprano, come el desayuno, sale de su casa, y va a su primer trabajo. En México fue taxista. José monta en bicicleta mucho porque no tiene su licencia, pero también tiene una troca vieja (no es nueva). Maneja su troca vieja sin licencia.

José, Eva, y Marta tienen vidas buenas en los Estados Unidos pero todos tienen un problema: Vinieron a los Estados Unidos sin documentos porque querían una vida mejor. Eva llevó a Marta a los Estados Unidos cuando Marta tenía dos años. Vinieron de El Salvador, un país muy peligroso. Marta quería que Eva tuviera una vida mejor con menos peligro y más oportunidades. José vino porque quería una vida mejor también. Él le manda dinero a su familia en México todos los meses y quiere vivir en México, no en los Estados Unidos.

Un día, cuando Eva prepara el desayuno, ella ve la televisión y ve "Continúan las redadas." Eva tiene miedo porque no quiere ser deportada. Hay muchas redadas.

Hay otro hombre. Se llama Paco. Paco vive en California también. Paco tiene una familia: tiene una esposa y una hija. Es un padre bueno. Y también es un esposo bueno. Todos los días, Paco se despierta temprano, habla y juega con su hija, sale de su casa, y va al trabajo. Tiene un trabajo bueno, pero es difícil. A veces a Paco no le gusta su trabajo porque tiene que separar a las familias. Un día Paco trabaja y entra el restaurante de José y Eva con otros hombre de su trabajo. Es un problema para José y Eva. ¿Qué será su trabajo?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

I am sharing all of this for FREE, but if you think this (or anything else that you got here for free) is useful and has saved you some time, feel free to give back here in Radiohead style (click here to see what I mean by Radiohead style). 

Upper level resources for Coco

Update: Here is a (free) doc with some very basic cloze activities, along with translations, for five of the songs in the movie.

Okay, so if there isn't a glut of resources for the movie Coco, I am sure there will be soon! Ha! It is such an amazing movie!

But I have created something to add to that glut! Specifically, this resource will be useful for upper level teachers if you want to go really slowly through the movie and watch it in Spanish with Spanish subtitles. 

In the fall I used Arianne's amazing resources and some others to learn about Día de Muertos and many of the cultural products, practices and perspectives related to it. All of those resources made the movie sooooo much more meaningful for my students when we saw it in the theater. But, now that they DVD is out, I am really looking forward to watching it in Spanish with my upper level students!

So I have created a 31 page document that includes cloze activity readings (divided by scenes) with word banks, along with108 comprehension (and a few other types of) questions, and four cloze activities for four of the songs in the movie. Did it take me a while to do this!?!? Yup!! The readings include lots of language and dialogue from the movie so that students will read, listen, say, and write the same language that they will hear when we watch.

Click here to see a preview and purchase it here.

It also includes the following:

• The same reading with questions and lines to answer (but not cloze) (27 pages)
• The same reading with questions (but NO lines to answer) (20 pages)
• Just the reading (17 pages) (also serves as answer key to the cloze)
• A doc with just the questions and song activities

My plan for these resources:

• Students will read segments (out loud in groups or as homework) of the movie before watching the movie.
• As they do the cloze activity, they will most likely have to look up some words and be exposed to some new vocabulary.
• They could answer the questions before or after watching, but I will have them answer them before watching so that they have more input to the language that they will hear (by looking back at reading and writing it and saying it as we go over it).
• We will also do some cloze activities for four songs that are in the movie.
• *Note* One frustrating thing is that the subtitles and the audio frequently don't match! In the readings, I have mostly written the language that they will hear, not the language of the subtitles.

And on another note, I am sure that Martina Bex's resources will the ones to go to for Novices! Or maybe Mis Clases Locas too (haven't purchased those yet!)

Also... I am working on a BONUS: a presentation with screenshots and the readings. Here is a glimpse of it in video in Edpuzzle.