One of my favorite things to do is find new CI units of study to use in class. I often blissfully jump down the rabbit hole of creative ideas on Facebook and Teachers Pay Teachers. However, when I find a unit that works perfectly in my curriculum, I work it like a puzzle to see how I can tie it in with other units. This is the case with Mar de Plástico by Carrie Toth and the novel Noche de Oro by Kristy Placido.
I taught both of these last year in level three (note: Noche de Oro is book two of a series, but I only teach the second – it works very well as a stand-alone whole class novel). My level 4 students still comment on how much they enjoyed these lessons.
This year, my level threes are completely new to me and have a different background set of vocabulary from. So I need to come up with something that puts the puzzle pieces of these lessons together – both reinforcing vocab from one lesson while pre-teaching vocab for the other.
I found this adorable movie short by Pixar: Piper. It is about a baby sandpiper learning how to forage for food.
Sandpipers spend time in Costa Rica, the setting of Noche de Oro, on their migration route. They also live in a marine-coastal environment, tying it to Mar de Plástico. Piper makes a sweet little Movie Talk to put these two lessons together as a larger unit of study.
Here is the Movie Talk I made. It incorporates some of the vocab we will acquire from our Mar de Plástico study. It also pre-teaches some key vocab for Noche de Oro.
*Some prefer to call this a Clip Chat as it does not adhere to the original design of Movie Talk* (pausing/playing/discussing the video)
If you would like a copy of the presentation, you can download it here. Simply make a copy to edit for your own purposes.
I also created an Embedded Reading to go along with my Movie Talk. You can see that here. Just make a copy and you can edit for your own purposes.
*Please note: I am not a native speaker of the language I teach. If you find errors in my work, please let me know. I will gladly change them!*
Join me at Comprehensible Online! I will be presenting on using music to teach culture and brain-based language acquisition.
Sometimes I don´t that I was looking for something until it appears – thank you! I will use this to connect Dónde Está Eduardo (also ending in Costa Rica) with Mar de Plástico. I´ll be book talking Robo & Noche as we resume FVR after break! Mil gracias!
Sometimes I don´t that I was looking for something until it appears – thank you! I will use this to connect Dónde Está Eduardo (also ending in Costa Rica) with Mar de Plástico. I´ll be book talking Robo & Noche as we resume FVR after break! Mil gracias!