Dreaming Spanish for Intermediates... and for AP preparation

Do you know about Dreaming in Spanish videos!?! There are TONS of them and they are EXCELLENT! Pablo Roman's videos are a student favorite for Tarea Semanal and they are a favorite of mine as well. I love reading what students write about his videos every week. And I have used them in my food unit as well (see here).

(Sidenote: If you and/or your students use his videos frequently, you should consider supporting him on Patreon! I do and I actually just updated my support to $5/month!)

This summer I worked to create nine activities to go along with nine of Pablo's Dreaming Spanish videos. The activities are aligned to six of the AP themes:

• Theme: Personal and Public Identities: Personal Beliefs
• Theme: Families and Communities: Global Citizenship
• Theme: Contemporary Life: Way of life
• Theme: World Challenges: Social Consciousness
• Theme: Science and Technology: Discoveries and Inventions
• Theme: Beauty and Aesthetics: Language and Literature and Architecture

Note: Even if you don't teach AP Spanish, these are very relevant themes to delve into! 

These nine activities are included in the level 4 digital textbook called Nuestra Historia. I am so excited about this curriculum! If you are looking for an amazing CI curriculum aligned with AP themes starting at level 1, I highly recommend checking it out! Levels 1-3 are out and level 4 is coming out soon (but I have access to it since I am working for them).

I am sharing this activity sheet so that others can use it. It is very similar to the ones that I created for Nuestra Historia level 4 digital textbook.  The activities go along with the video above "We don't have a tooth fairy."

I am teaching AP Spanish this year. It starts second semester, but I have Cultura y Civlización right now and that is a sort of pre-AP class for some of the students. So, those students will be doing all nine of the Nuestra Historia activities, plus this one for the video above.

So, why are these activities so excellent for AP preparation!?! 

• Students have to listen to authentic audio on the AP test. That is very difficult! I have found that Pablo's Dreaming Spanish videos are an excellent bridge to get students to be able to listen to authentic audio.
• By watching his videos, students will gain a ton of cultural knowledge, which they will need, particularly for the Comparación Cultural portion of the test.
• Each of these activities end with a cultural comparison. For instance, in the activity for the video above, students have to compare el ratoncito Pérez with a fictional animal from their culture. 
• Students get in the habit of listening to something more than once and gaining more comprehension and confidence after each time. 
• These really are a fun way to get students to practice their interpretive listening skills.

And why are they so excellent in general?!?

• They are engaging!
• They are comprehensible!
• They are chock full of culture!
• Pablo is a native speaker, but he speaks slowly enough that students can understand him... and students gain a ton of confidence from that!

Click here to acces the activity sheet in Google Docs. Feel free to make a copy and edit. 

Updated and enhanced FREE unit: Juan y Clara (Siendo #Idiota)

I posted about this Story/Song of the week a few weeks ago, but I have developed it a lot, so I wanted to post about it again. I am currently using this unit to start Spanish 2. Many of these students did not have a CI teacher last year, so this is a great way to start!

You can find all the resources, links, possible assessments and a suggested order of activities (for free!) here. 


See below for the goals for the students for the unit. These are my other secret, teacher goals are:

• Students are engaged! This is a non-honors class and some of them are used to just doing school, and not really engaging.
• Students feel comfortable in the classroom.
• Students feel confident that they can acquire language.
• Focus on communication... not conjugation! 
• Review and reinforce high frequency vocabulary.
• Confuse ;) them by using a regular, authentic, good song and music video as the base of the unit.
• Give a ton of input!
• Talk about las redes sociales and the damage that they can do in relationships. 

The "I can" statements for the unit are: 

• I  can function in a solo español classroom
• I can interpret a story.
• I can show that I understand a story in a variety of ways, including: 
• Acting out words/sentences
• Translating parts of the story
• Illustrating parts of the story
• Putting sentences in order
• Answering questions (about the story and about myself)
• Identifying cierto/falso statements
• Filling in the blanks of the story
• Writing simple sentences about the story
• I can acquire new language through a story/song and a variety of related activities.
• I can understand an authentic song in Spanish. 

UBD - El Ekeko y Las Minas de Bolivia

I am finally going to use the Fluency Matters reader: El Ekeko: Un misterio boliviano! I love this novel by Katie Baker (another favorite of mine is also by Katie Baker: La llorona de Mazatlán). The reader will be a small part of the unit. We will read it together, act things out, and do some "listen and draw." 

According to Fluency Matters, the reader is "Advanced Beginning", but I am going to use it in my first unit for Cultura y Civilización (Spanish 4/5). That class has a very wide range of proficiencies, so this novel will help everyone feel at ease and it is engaging with a ton of cultural tangents to go off on...

Fortunately, Arianne Dowd has created a ton of resources that will accompany this novel perfectly! Her resources would make an excellent stand-alone unit too. 

The resources that she created will help me to reach all levels of proficiency levels, particularly because there are so many activities that are connected authentic resources (you can see them all on this page), such as articles, news clips, PSAs (about children's rights), and other videos. There are so many AP Themes in this unit as well and six of my students will have AP Spanish second semester this year, so this will be an excellent introduction to some of the tasks they will have to do on the test.

Also, Arianne's depth of cultural knowledge is amazing! I learned a ton as I was preparing this unit and I can't wait to do this unit with my students.

Here is the UbD document that has the details of the unit, the Essential Questions, the Enduring Understandings, the order of the unit, the practice activities, and the assessments (all of wich are dound in Arianne's resources below).

These are the four resources that I will be using: