Mejor que una telenovela: Reality TV

As part of our La Diversidad de la Gastonomía unit in my Cultura y Civilización class, we watched one episode of Telemundo's MasterChef Latino and students LOVED it!! And so did I! I highly recommend it to any Spanish teacher. It might be fantastic during this time period of AP tests as something to do if you are missing 1/3 of your class!

This is the episode we watched:

Why did I love it?

• It fit perfectly with our unit and it will fit with what I do in Spanish 3 too! 
• It is an authentic resources from the United States! It is so important for my students in New Hampshire to see that there are tons of Spanish speakers in the United States and that they all bring their own cultural products, practices, and perspectives to enrich the culture of the U.S..
• You can watch with Spanish or English subtitles. I have a variety of proficiency levels (Spanish 4-7) in this class, so we watched in Spanish and then would switch to English midway through. 
• With the subtitles in Spanish, it was very comprehensible for my students, especially after we had watched it for 30 minutes of so. One thing that makes it comprehensible, is the repetition.
• I could pause it and have students talk about a variety of the foods or the characters.
• There is a variety of accents that students hear.
• There are so many episodes that I can use in the future! 

Why did students love it?

• The food!
• The contestants and the judges!
• The drama!
• They could understand so much of it! 
• Students wanted to talk about the food and the characters.
• So many 
• They almost unanimously requested that we watch another episode on Friday... instead of Gran Hotel!