Resources for your Corrida de Toros unit!

 There is a new TPRS novel called Bianca Nieves y los siete toritos by Carrie Toth. I have used it and it is excellent! It is written in the past tense and written for the novice level, but it could be used in a variety of levels. One thing I love about TPRS novels is that they can easily be made into thematic units with Essential Questions. They also give me a lot of comprehensible input to give to my students. And they give us a lot to talk about in the target language. The Teacher's Guide for this novel is excellent as well. The novel and the Teacher's Guide  (will be available soon) make for a very comprehensive curriculum, so a teacher does not have to create a ton of activities to go along with the novel.

Here is the book description from the TPRS website:

Bullfighting is a dangerous sport, and there is nothing more menacing than facing a raging bull in the middle of the ring. All eyes are on the great torero, ‘El Julí,’ as he faces off against the most ferocious bull in the land, but nobody, aside from his daughter, Bianca, seems to notice that his greatest threat walks on two legs, not four. In her attempt to warn and save her father, Bianca soon realizes that fighting an angry bull is much safer than battling greed and deception.

So, if you use this Bianca Nieves y los siete toritos, I definitely recommend the Teacher's Guide (the TPRS TGs are always excellent), but I have a few ideas (mostly from other teachers - Kristy Placido and Carrie Toth) to share here.

First, here are some possible Essential Questions to guide a unit using this book:

• ¿Dónde está la corrida de toros un fenómeno cultural? ¿En qué consiste una corrida de toros? ¿Tenemos algo similar en nuestra cultura?
• ¿Dónde se prohíbe la corrida? ¿Por qué son tan polémicas las corridas? En tu opinión, ¿Es la corrida de toros un arte o una tortura?
• ¿Cómo se retratan la corrida de toros dentro del cortometraje "Ferdinando el toro," el libro Bianca Nieves y los siete toritos, y la película "Blancanieves"? ¿Cómo son similares y diferentes los tres?¿Cuál sería un fin alternativo para uno de los tres? O, ¿cómo continuaría uno de los tres?

These would probably be used in a level 3 class. For a level 1 or 2 class, I would make them simpler.

In order for students to understand that Bullfighting is a real thing in Spain, I showed them this 60 Minutes segment (or you could show the whole episode 43 minutes long)

Below are a couple of infografías that could be used as well. Some good ideas to do with infografías:  two truths and a lie, summarize what information is included on the infografía, or have students summarize certain parts of infografía and share with class.

The next resource is something to definitely include -----> the Disney short Ferdinando el Toro. You could do a Movie Talk (see new slideshow below) with this or a variety of other things. I did a Movie Talk activity with the video and then students did this cloze activity (Kristy Placido transcribed most of this). They also had to figure out what the bolded words meant.

**NEW (5/20/15)** I created a slideshow for El Toro Ferdinando. I will use this to start the unit in Spanish 2. This is also a great way to introduce the preterite and imperfect. Here is a preview

In order to understand the connection to the original fairy tale Blancanieves, we talked about it a bit. Kristy Placido has written the story and posted it here. I will use that next time to go over the story, depending on the level.

After doing those introduction activities (which could be an entire week or more), students were ready to read the book. Another thing I recommend is getting a stuffed bull to represent Ferdinando... yes, yes, kind of cursi, but it might help for some of the acting scenes! We couldn't find a bull, so we had another stuff animal that a student brought in (can't remember what it was now). It would be nice if TPRS Publishing included one if you order a classroom set of books :)

Depending on the level and maturity of students, another fantastic resource to use with this book is the Spanish movie Blancanieves. It is black and white and it is a silent movie. Sounds like it wouldn't be a good movie for high school students, but I have shown it twice, once to AP and once to Spanish 3. Both classes were very engaged. We paused a lot and had a lot to talk about. Warning: it might be a bit heavy for some! There are lots of comparisons to made with this movie and the book! Here is the trailer:

You could also use lots of flamenco music with this unit. Here is an example from the movie (unfortunately, the grandmother dies at the end of this scene):

Here is an evaluación that I used for Spanish 3. 

I look forward to using this book again, especially now with the new Teacher's Guide. I highly recommend it and I look forward to seeing what other people do with it!

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

El Libro de la Vida

Update 10/2/17 - I highly recommend Arianne Dowd's materials for El Libro de la Vida. 


I am going to be out for a few of days for conferences and I wanted to leave some plans that were valuable, yet doable and relaxing too. So, I finally watched the movie, "El Libro de la Vida" and made a question guide to go along with the movie. It is a sweet movie and visually beautiful. I made this basic guide with questions for upper level students to do as they watch. They will watch the movie in Spanish with Spanish subtitles. For my lower level students, they will watch with subtitles in English and do a shorter writing assignment, perhaps filling in the chart at the end of the guide.

On another note, I am sure that this movie will be a great one to show next November 1-2 too!

The La Santa Cecilia song "Calaverita" might be a fantastic way to start a unit on El Día de los Muertos. Here is a slideshow to use (read more about it here):

                  

Variedad para el examen final

Image source

First semester just ended and once again I changed the final exam that I give in my Cultura y Civilización class. I love teaching this class and the freedom I have (it is totally different than what I have to teach in Spanish 2 and 3!). I think I have changed the final every time I have taught the class (2012's version), but this year might be the one I stick with. This time, I used Carrie Toth's ideas and gave students a variety of choices to show me what they know and what they have learned during the semester. I was very happy with the final "products," and they were really fun, and funny, to grade. Students did an excellent job of "weaving" in details from what they learned this semester, and they also made some excellent connections. 

There were 7 choices, but these were the most popular:

• Feeling creative? Write a fictional short story to accompany one of the units. Create a new leyenda of Kingswood or a new serie para la tele. Connect it to what we have learned in the class. Next year it could be one of the resources we use during our study! You'll be famoso(a)! Do you best to show me the depth and breadth of your language skills!

    

• Feeling even more creative? Write a story in which two characters from two different novels, movies or El Internado somehow meet. Next year it could be one of the resources we use during our study! You’ll be famoso(a)! Do your best to show me the depth and breadth of your language skills!!!

• Compare and contrast two of the characters (and their experiences) from the books or movies that we studied. These are the characters: Makenna (Noche de Oro), Laney (La Llorona de Mazatlán), Chava (Voces Inocentes), Machuca, the narrator from Vida y Muerte en la Mara Salvatrucha, La Llorona, any of the other legends we learned about, any character from El Internado, the narrator from Vida y Muerte en la Mara Salvatrucha, or anyone else.  **Note** Do not compare two leyendas… you already did that!

• Do you think songs and music videos are a good way to learn Spanish? Why? How and what did you learn from the songs and/or music videos in this class? Write about your 4 favorite songs from this class. Write why you liked them, what 2 of your favorite lines from each are, 5 new words that you learned from each song, and what else you learned from the song.

    

One student wrote a short story in the first person and somehow he managed to somehow incorporate references to the following things: the civil war in El Salvador, Laney from La Llorona de Mazatlán, gang life (MS-13) in the U.S., mega-mines in Argentina, La Mosca from this video, and the difficulties of immigration in Spain and the U.S. He finished the story by writing a song with Calle 13 and Ana Tijoux, and then becoming rich and famous.

Another student had the narrator from Vida y Muerte en la Mara Salvatrucha and Padre McEnroe (from the movie Machuca) somehow meeting. Another wrote about Paula from El Internado meeting la llorona. The "new" legends were also fun to read. Only one student wrote about how songs and music videos helped him to learn, but that was one of my favorites to read.

The speaking part of the exam was a conversation and it was easy for them. I learned a lot about what they liked. One thing that was overwhelming was that we should definitely continue watching El Internado and using Kahoot... everyone loves Kahoot!

Another fun thing we did at the end of the course was a 16 song bracket to decide what the favorite song of the semester was, both individually and as a class. The winning song was "Somos Sur" by Ana Tijoux. Two other favorites were: surprisingly (to me), "La de la mochila azul" (from Voces Inocentes) and "Me Voy" by Vázquez Sounds: