** PLEASE MAKE A COPY OF THE PRESENTATION. I WON’T BE GRANTING ACCESS TO MY ORIGINAL WORK. THANKS!**
I am asked frequently how I go about linking my lessons. The truth is, ofttimes I don’t. But occasionally, inspiration hits and I am able to spiral lessons into a thematic unit – or better yet -across levels so that the language acquired this year logically and easily builds on content and context. Let’s face it, it is the context that makes it compelling and without that key element, not much acquisition happens.
THE BRAIN CRAVES NOVELTY
“I’m not gonna lie” (as my students so frequently say), this year it has been super hard to find the spark, that thing that makes it compelling. And what is compelling one day is a total flop a mere 24 hours later. The brain craves novelty. And this year it craves it more than ever.
NEW YEAR / NEW SEMESTER
Our finals were mid-January with only a three day break between finals and starting a new semester. With creating and grading finals, I didn’t spend a lot of time creating something new for my level 2’s. My level 1’s were finishing the
Muchacha unit, no prep needed there. With nothing planned, I went to my good friend,
Sr. Wooly, and discovered the
El Banco E-Learning Plans. I followed these plans to the letter. And, guess what? My students were in love with Federico and Margarita. They loved debating if they had actually committed the crime or not.
**If you don’t have a Wooly account, you NEED one. This is my go-to site for whenever I need any kind of respite!**
INSPIRATION!
Seeing how compelling CRIME was for my students, I quickly searched my resources to see what I could link to El Banco to extend the lesson. Turns out, I had several short lessons to choose from!
I found:
- This free download from The Comprehensible Classroom about a woman who trains her cats to rob her neighbors,
- Another free download from The Comprehensible Classroom about a Bitcoin crime – only this one is designed to make students think about true vs fake news, (THANK YOU, MARTINA BEX!!!!)
- And finally, this TPT purchase (AGAIN from Martina) about a car chase in Sevilla, España that results in they discovery of very interesting contraband. This is also a fake news article that requires students to make judgements on what is real and what is false.
I made some quick introduction slides to make the readings more accessible and away we went! (I am unable to share my slides as this is considered derivative work and would break copyright if I were to share it).
But what I can share is a movie talk based on this clever movie short: The Bicycle Thief
Play it all the way to the end – you will be surprised!!
To round out my compelling unit, I created this movie talk. I can’t wait to share it with students next week! This can easily be turned into a Nearpod or Pear Deck lesson. I chose not to because my lessons leading up to it were Nearpod. Too much of a good thing is never good – remember the novelty thing? If we always do nearpod, we will be bored, bored, bored.
SO MUCH FUN!!
We have laughed until we cried reading these outrageous stories. We have debated (yes, some English was used as this is level 2 we are talking about here) and most importantly, we have thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I am reminded of pre-pandemic days and all the fun we had back then.
Please make your own editable copy of
this movie talk. One you download it, it’s yours. Enjoy!
(I have not completed the embedded readings yet, but as soon as I do, they will be added to this post).
I share my resources in the hope that just one reader will get a bit of respite in this cray-cray year. Hopefully, this will spark some creativity in you! If you create any resources based on mine, please share back to we can put it out there for everyone. Pay it forward is my motto this year because so many have mentored, helped, and inspired me in my CI journey!
Also, if you find errors, please let me know – I am very far from perfect.
Happy teaching!
Wow! This is a blessing! Thank you so much for all this information and the resources. I will be incorporating and letting you know how it goes.
These resources are amazing! I can't wait to use them with my Spanish II class soon. Thank you so much!!
Great resources, thanks!
By the way, check you slide "cuando estás cerca DEL agua…" Thanks!
Thanks for your effort! I'm definitely going to use in my lessons.
Regards,
Moisés.-
Spanish Podcasts for beginners
Spanish Grammar
gracias! I hate missing the little details like that. I appreciate the help!