El Internado: Pre-watching Slideshow for Ep. 1

I love using El Internado! It is engaging, interesting and full of great language! One of my favorite comments came from a student this week. After starting class with a review of the characters and asking several questions in Spanish, the student said, "I am surprised how much I remember!" When the material is interesting to students, they will remember things and learn more!

As Spanish teachers, we are so lucky because there are are a ton of resources to use with this show and make it comprehensible for our students. Bethanie Drew and I collaborated and created some post-watching resources for El Internado (inspired by Mike Peto's reading for Episodio 1, definitely worth the $6.99!) and I am continuing to use our activities, but I decided to use some more pre-watching activities this year, so I created the slideshow below to use before we watch. I read the subtitles (if there are any), describe what happens, and check for understanding. As the slideshow progresses, I tried to include less spoilers.

I have also included some links to resources from Dustin Williamson and Kristy Placido in the slideshow.

I am using this with my Cultura y Civilización class, so they understand a lot, but there are many things that I need to explain. We go very slowly, so far we have watched about 30 minutes during two class periods (we only watch on Fridays), of which we spent about 120 minutes dedicated to the show. The format is this: use slideshow to describe what happens, watch some of the show, do reading activities aloud together, and repeat.

Feel free to use the slideshow, but if you improve it, please share back! I share my work for free, it is not perfect, and I really appreciate feedback about how to make it better!

If any of this is useful for you, please consider giving back in a Radiohead style format.

Adding to the resources for El Internado...

Note: These resources fall under Fair Use for Educational Purposes. Click here to learn more.

Many teachers are using El Internado in class, so I finally jumped on the bandwagon and have started showing it in my Cultura y Civilización class. It is something we do on Fridays as a reward for speaking a lot of Spanish during the week. It has been going really well. Students are engaged and they are hearing and reading (subtitles) real Spanish... and they are also having fun! (**Warning** Some scenes might need to be skipped and there are some "romantic situations" and profanity. I recommend a permission slip and probably only for older students.)

As we watch, I pause a lot for explanations and questions. I have created a three post-watching activities (so far). The episodes are long, so we watch 15-20 minutes and then read/answer aloud as a class. The readings are very simple and easy for the students, but all students get something out of it (differentiation!). Watching El Internado is an "easy day" for students, but there is a ton of learning and input happening!

There are lots of resources that other teachers have created (see below for links), but this format of watching a bit and then doing the reading activities aloud together as a class after is working very well for me and my students. Here are the post-watching readings that I have used so far. I created three of them (episodes 2-4 and I am going to start 5 and 6). Thanks to Bethanie Drew for the proofreading and enhancements to these!

• Episodio 01X01 - I used Mike Peto's readings (no longer available) (the ones I created below use the same format that he used). For the first episode, I highly recommend screen shots of all the characters with descriptions of who they are (Mike also made one that you can find here (and it is free)).
• Episodio 01X02 - Todo el mundo tiene un secreto (Google doc version)
• Episodio 01X03 - Ojos que no ven (and Google doc version)
• Episodio 01X04 - Un mensaje en una botella  (and Google doc version)
• Episodio 01X05 - Un cadáver en la laguna (and Google doc version)
• Episodio 01X06 - La noche de Santa Isabela (Google doc version)

Mike Peto, Dustin Williamson, Karen Goering, Lindsey Camacho, the Reading (MA) Spanish 
department (formerly including Meaghan McSherry), and Allison Wienhold (and others) have created some fantastic resources to use with El Internado. You could keep clicking and go into a maze of El Internado resources! So many creative ideas!

There are also some Kahoots already created. Just search for El Internado, mikepeto, placido or srakjacobs. Students LOVE that game and it is a great way to review.

*Update* 1/3/17 - If you are looking for something similar for Episodio 02X01, here is a link to one that Lisa South made