Month: October 2017

FLANC 2017: Sabe a chocolate

Welcome to FLANC 2017! Kristy Rogers & I are excited to present a session on turning an innately compelling topic–chocolate–into a cultural & curricular context that can be used in any level and in all modes of communication. We are two mom/teachers who are committed to working smarter, not harder, and are here to share some of our ideas. And to taste chocolate.  Hope to see you soon!

Find our handout here  and slides here

El Ministerio del Tiempo

While I adore and continue to use El Internado in my intermediate Spanish classes, this year I wanted to try something different with my Heritage Spanish course.  I’m trying out El Ministerio del Tiempo, currently in season 3 in Spain.  I LOVE this show, I and have learned quite a bit from it myself.  The rights to it have been bought by Netflix, so I’m hoping it’s only a matter of time before we get to see the whole series.  I have season 1 on DVD, and hope to get to season 2 soon.

Here are some of the reasons for liking it for class:
1. It’s not on Netflix. This means that students need to watch in class & join in the discussion–they can’t watch ahead and then claim they don’t need to watch in class because they’ve seen it already.
2. It’s a different kind of Spanish than many are accustomed to, so we all have the chance to learn new things.
3. It’s rooted in history, but takes place in current time.
4. I have the DVD’s, and each episode has an extra that talks about the actual history referenced in the story.
5. Lots of connections with AP Sp Literature curriculum.

While the show is usually pretty tame, there are definitely parts that NO ONE would want to show in class. However, we just skip on over those parts ¿a qué sí? 😝

Here’s the link to what I have so far:  El ministerio del tiempo introducción y capítulo 1. The activities start off pretty easy/well scaffolded, then move to more open ended questions. In order to understand what’s going on, it would be helpful for students to know a little bit about Los Acueductos de Segovia (http://www.nationalgeographic.com.es/…/acueducto-segovia-…/1), el 11-M, & Velázquez/Las Meninas.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I am!

Update 10/15/17:  Here are some additional resources for this episode:

  • My students have become totally hooked on this show.  As a result, I have not continued the moment-by-moment guides because they seemed to be interfering with watching.  I think I may leave them as recaps later in the week as part of a sub plan.  Students have commented that they are learning new things (a win!) and that they are finding the language a challenge.  This is significant because there was initially resistance among them, saying that they already know Spanish.
  • Quizlet  Kahoot  for episode 1.
  • We played a version of Hedbanz with photos/screenshots from the show.
  • It is very important that you skip minutes 48-49 with your classes.
  • We also have played reverse charades, something I picked up from La Maestra Loca.  To play, I wrote several quotes/sentences that included our recent vocabulary and from the show on notecards.  For example, one phrase was “Yo nunca miento”, a quote from Alonso.  I divided the class into 2 teams, and asked for one volunteer per team to come up front.  We played charades, but instead of the whole team trying to guess what the person up front was acting out, the person up front was doing the guessing and the team was doing the acting.  The idea was that the guesser would have to get the entire phrase, not just a word or two.  We used this to review key quotes from the episode & to review who said what to whom.  The kids really got into it, and were really creative with their clues!
  • I think we will wrap up episode 1 with a writing task… something simple but that will also give me another measure of their progress so far.  They are starting to come along in their self-selected reading too, and I’m looking forward to seeing their progress.