I have wanted to try Carrie Toth’s “Circle the Wagons” post-reading activity for some time and I found the perfect unit to do it: Abuela Grillo: A Bolivian Legend About the Exploitation of Water by the CCC Spanish Store.
Abuela Grillo is a water scarcity unit designed for upper levels. I’m using it in level 4 this year and my students are loving it!
First, we learned background vocabulary using the suggested activities in the unit. Next we read and played some games to make sure everyone was comfortable with the content and order of events. Once we had watched the video of the legend and I was certain everyone was able to make at least basic statements we tried our hand at Circle the Wagons. I was floored by how well everyone did!
The set up:
- The night before, I created a variety of screenshots of the video. I intentionally made more screenshots than students so there would be plenty of options. This took very little time!
- I printed them at school the next morning.
- Next I gave very basic instructions in Spanish to choose a picture that you would like to talk about and make 2 to 3 statements describing that picture.
- The next step is important and I think key to getting everyone involved: two students had to ask questions of the speaker about their photo. They could be as simple as: who is in the picture? what happened before this picture? What happened after? Why did this happen? How did this occur?
I am very lucky to have 3 students who participated in Indiana University’s summer study abroad Honors Program for Foreign Languages this past summer (their abilities literally EXPLODED, by the way!) who very naturally helped lead the discussions. This is a large section of Spanish 4 and I was afraid that if I made just one large circle, not everyone would have the chance to speak. I am also very lucky that due to a scheduling fluke, these students have been in class with me for four years and are willing to try just about anything I throw at them!
It’s also VERY important to remember that this is spontaneous speaking, so correcting grammar was not high on my list of priorities. However, providing a safe environment where students are willing to try speaking IS my priority! Correcting content errors is fine, but correcting every little grammar error (at this point) is only going to make the class stop communicating altogether. This activity isn’t the place for that, in my opinion.
I was so proud of how well they did! They took turns and helped each other out when someone forgot a term and were very encouraging with each other. If you teach upper levels, you should try both Circle the Wagons and Abuela Grillo! I know you will love them as much as I!
