New post-AP-Film class --> First unit: Diarios de Motocicleta

 For a variety of reasons, I am so excited for this school year! It is my third year at my current year (after 18 years at the same school 💚 and 24 years in public) and I am excited to be teaching and creating a new course for our post-AP (or heritage speakers or native speakers or Intermediate High students). This is the description of the course:

This course is for students with an Intermediate High or above proficiency level in Spanish. Through authentic films, students will learn about a variety of cultural products, practices and perspectives from a variety of Spanish speaking countries. In addition, students will learn about the history, politics, arts, and music of a variety of Spanish speaking countries. This class will be conducted entirely in Spanish. Assessments will be widely varied and will be in the three modes of communication. Discussion based classes will be frequent and will be student-led.

I use lots of films in AP, but I have always wanted to develop this course. In particular because I won't have the pressure of test prep ---> writing argumentative essays, teaching multiple choice strategies, etc.

For the first unit, I am going to use a movie that I haven't used in years: Diarios de Motocicleta. When I was in Segovia on a fab PD experience, one of the teachers - Justine! - reminded me of it. While the film has a few issues and a couple of scenes that I will skip, I think it will be an excellent, nuanced film to start the course... and I LOVE Gael García Bernal (we will also be doing a unit with También la lluvia, an all time fave!).

I have created resources here (still a bit of a work in progress): unit packet and slideshow that walks through the unit. I got a lot of help from ChatGPT throughout - saves SO MUCH TIME!!

Some things that the unit includes:

• Preguntas Esenciales
• Assessment ideas with rubrics
• See-Think-Wonder activities
• Word-Phrase-Sentence
• Tea Party with two versions of character descriptions (ChatGPT!), Quizlet to review and a Canvas Quiz (in the Commons) to review them as well
• I LOVE this activity and so do students (and teachers :) ) Thanks Rita Barrett and AnneMarie Chase!
• A Google Map with all the places
• A biography of Che (ChatGPT!) and a Quizlet to review
• PQA to do before each of the SIX parts of the movie
• After each section of the movie, students will write AND share the next day with a partner/group:
• Un momento impactante y/o importante
• Una cita importante (they can re-watch to find this)
• Una pregunta y/o comentario que tienes
• Una conexión a tu vida
• Una predicción
• I am sure I will add more for something after each part of the movie, like: put in order, who said it, who did it, questions and answers, etc. - stay tuned!
• In the slideshow, I have also included a couple of ¿Héroe o villano? videos about Che. 

Un recurso para enseñar sobre la inmigración

I have taught about immigration/migration MANY times, in many levels (scroll through some of my previous posts here). It is can be tricky, but it is also VERY important. 

I just taught a variation of some of those units in my AP class (here is the unit packet). The main resources were the movie Icebox (from 2019, but sitll relevant!), the book Testigo: La historia de Brayan (I was way for four class days, so my students read it on their own) and a wide variety of songs related to immigration/migration. Feel free to check out the Essential Questions and Assessments in the unit packet as well.

In addition to the obvious goals of acquiring lots of language and communicating (interpretively, interpersonally and presentationally) with each other about the topic, a few of my other goals for this unit were for students to:

• Understand how COMPLICATED immigration is.
• Have empathy for people who are undocumented. 
• Learn some facts about things that are happening right now.

My AMAZING students were VERY engaged and learned a TON.

Feel free to peruse what we did in the unit packet (lots of great stuff, including some good input dictados for Icebox), but the main thing I wanted to share is what we did with this  New York Times article "¿Qué derechos tienen las personas migrantes en EE. UU.?".

I made this slideshow and this student sheet to delve into the article and make it interactive (students had to work in groups and guess some of the answers).

Debí tirar más fotos ~ Resources for an AP Unit

Last year, I used Bad Bunny's documentary "Aquí vive gente" in Spanish 3 and it went really well, so I was very excited when his new album came out and some of his songs explored the topic of gentrification and Puerto Rican culture even more!

So, I decided to create a unit for my AP class. The students and I have learned a TON! We are just finishing up this week and it has been a wonderful unit! We have hit all the AP themes and students are making some amazing connections (example: Bad Bunny --> Kendrick Lamar and Jacobo Morales --> Samuel L. Jackson - so cool!).

These are our Essential Questions:

• ¿Por qué es considerada la música de Bad Bunny un acto de resistencia?
• ¿Es la música de Bad Bunny una buena manera de educar, generar conciencia y luchar?
• ¿Qué se puede aprender de la música y otras cosas producidas por Bad Bunny?
• ¿Cuáles son algunos de los desafíos mundiales que enfrenta Puerto Rico?

We delved into all sorts of resources, including:

• This presentation to learn some very basic information about Puerto Rico. There are LOTS of resources linked in there as well (some from another teacher, but I can't remember who - sorry for not crediting!)
• El cortometraje "Debí tirar más fotos" - I highly recommend that students (and teachers) investigate some of the culture in the video BEFORE watching. Here is what I had my students do. Also, this super sweet interaction between Bad Bunny and Jacobo Morales was also helpful to understand the cortometraje better too.
• These two videos that explain the cortometraje: Bad Bunny y la Gentrificación: El Mensaje Oculto de Debí Tirar Más Fotos and  Lo Que No Viste en DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (Short Film) | Análisis Completo. There is also a Canvas Quiz to review the information from the two videos.
• Three songs: Lo que le pasó a Hawaii, Turista (video just came out two days ago - have to skip a part!) and La Mudanza. They are mostly appropriate, but (obviously) use your own discretion! I have mature juniors and seniors and I decided that they value of the songs superseded some inappropriate language. (I only played the end part of La Mudanza once and ended it early.)
• This article: "Lo que le pasó a Hawaii: el significado detrás de la canción de protesta de Bad Bunny" and some questions about it.
• The documentary "Aquí vive gente" (start at 4:00) and these questions about it.

Here is the unit packet (with assessments). I am really looking forward to create for the Representación Visual assessment! 

Also, if you use Canvas, you can find the entire unit in the Commons:

Alternatively, if you just want to teach "Lo que le pasó a Hawaii", pages 6-12 here could be great! 

This is one of my favorite activities to really delve into the meaning of a song!