New Spanish 2

I have been teaching my Cultura y Civilización course now for five years and I mostly share what I do in there on this blog. When I first started that course, it was a major paradigm shift for me. I was teaching culture and content in a communicative way, instead of vocabulary list, quiz, grammar, quiz, review, test. I have developed that course to now have 14 different units that rotate so that some students can repeat the course as "part 2". I am very proud of what I do in that class and I love teaching it.

During the last five years, I have also taught Spanish 2 and 3. I have made some changes in those classes like using more authentic resources, doing speaking assessments,  and reading 2 TPRS novels in each class during the course of the semester, and that has helped me to be able to teach in a more CI way with a higher percentage of TL being spoken by me and students. But, those courses are still heavily based on a textbook, with chapters with long lists of vocabulary, specific grammar points, fill in the blank activities, and much more English than there should be.

I have been reading the book Languages and Learners: Making the Match  (highly recommended), by Helena Curtain and Carol Ann A. Dahlberg, and it is validating everything that I think I should be doing, but haven't been doing completely. Reading that book, along with attending CSCTFL and seeing some powerful student examples of what they do with the language, pushed me to (finally) drastically change what I am doing in my Spanish 2 classroom. (Note: I am only two weeks in to this change.)

I am still teaching the same content (clothing, reflexives, past tense, etc.), but in a different way. One of my biggest goals is to stay in the Target Language for 90% of the class - me and the students. My other goal is to change the evaluaciones that I use; so the ones I have created are more communicative. In order to that, I realized that I cannot continue to teach with a vocab/grammar/textbook focus.

So, where to start? I decided to start with some Martina Bex units. I am very thankful to her because she gave me some ideas about where to start. The first unit I did was Ladrones unit (script here and entire unit on Teachers Pay Teachers). I really liked the unit, but some students found the story to be a bit silly (they are 10th graders), so we adjusted it a little bit. Martina's other resources for this unit were excellent.

I have compiled some of Martina's resources for the unit here and this slideshow has my preguntas esenciales, the evaluaciones, and part of the unit (the part that Martina shares freely on her site). There is also a rubric so that students know what is expected of them as far as speaking Spanish in the classroom is concerned.

We spent about 7 days (80 minute classes) on this unit, including the day of the evaluaciones. My students (a non-honors class at the end of the day) were excellent! I think they see the validity in this approach (even if it is difficult at times).

My next unit is called, "Mi Rutina Diaria." I have compiled the preguntas esenciales, resources and evaluaciones here.

Below is the first part of the unit. I am going to do three "segments" of this unit with three cortometrajes - Alarma, Destino and El Monstruo en el Armario (very engaging - thanks Elena López) and then explain how reflexive verbs conjugate (using Martina's notes). **Note** I edited the cortometraje below because the real ending has a gun and I wasn't quite comfortable with that. Students could definitely relate to this guy (who has a hard time waking up).

Below are the evaluaciones for the unit. By focusing on these evaluaciones, I am focusing on having students talk a lot and stay in the Target Language.

• Evaluación hablada (weekly quiz grade): Speaking "solo español" in class.
• Evaluación escrita y hablada (quiz grade): Write a short description of what happens in the video "Alarma". Use the Target Structures. Draw some illustrations and use them to tell what happens in the video.
• Evaluación escrita y hablada (quiz grade): Write a short description of what happens in the video "El Monstruo del Armario". Use the Target Structures. Draw some illustrations and use them to tell what happens in the video.
• Examen (en tres partes):
• Evalución de leer y escribir: Read about someone's morning routine and compare and contrast yours to his/hers. This is from the Martina Bex Packet.
• Evaluación de hablar: Describe your morning routine. Describe 5-8 things that you do each morning before you come to school
• Evaluación de escuchar: Watch some commercials, understand the basic message of each one, describe what the people are doing in the commercials, and read sentences about the commercials and identify which sentence goes with which commercial.

Big thanks to Elena López , Cynthia Hitz and Martina Bex (and probably other people too) for the inspiration and help with putting this all together.

I should also mention that Martina's unit packets are very helpful because she explains her methods and how to teach with TPRS, in addition to giving great resources.

My goal is use Bianca Nieves y los siete toritos (from TPRS Publishing by Carrie Toth) with this group for the last 3 weeks of the school year. I think they will be ready by then and it will be wonderful to just focus on the book, instead of having it "on the side."

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):