There are a ton of free excellent resources for El Día de los Muertos (see Dustin Williamson's compilation here). Amy Zimmer and Elena López have also created some amazing resources to use. Also, here is a movie guide for El libro de la Vida.
One of my favorite things that I did last year for my Spanish 1 Día de los Muertos unit was the song "Calaverita" by La Santa Cecilia. It is a catchy tune with lots of room to explore some products, practices and perspectives related to el Día de los Muertos. The video is also a fun story. (If you look closely, you might see a certain politician who is no allowed to enter the party.)
Elena López and I created the slideshow below that tells the "story" of the video. The slideshow used comprehensible language for a beginning Spanish 1 class. We included some vocabulary slides (I wanted to target certain words) to start and also included questions to ask as we tell the story (students usually have whiteboards to answer the questions). I put the lectura and the questions in this doc so that students can read it again and write the answers. The video has a great twist at the end and I think students will like it. If you want to make a copy and/or embed it somewhere for classroom use, click here. I
Also, if any of this is useful for you, please consider giving back in a Radiohead style format.
After we go through this slideshow we will watch the video and do a cloze activity with the song (also in the doc). The translation is also there because I like students to know what they are singing about all week!
Dustin created this slideshow to introduce the band and I adapted it a bit. If you want to make a copy and/or embed it somewhere for classroom use, click here.
These are all the resources that Elena (mostly her!) and I created for online practice:
Memrise (Kara's)
Kara's basic vocab quizalize - - quiz.al code = uzr346
Quizailize (Elena)
Textivate - Preguntas de comprensión (multiple choice) (Kara)
Vocabulario - Quizlet
Vocabulario - Memrise
Presentación - Google slides (Historia original de Kara Jacobs)
Hoja para estudiantes (usa páginas 4-7 para el cuento)
Hoja de la canción (actividad de cloze con preguntas y traducción)
Historia reducida (para dibujar y recontar)
Ordena la lectura - Textivate
Preguntas de la lectura - Textivate (en proceso)
Historia reducida (para dibujar y recontar)
Preguntas para Educanon - Papel
Feel free to use it and let me know if you have any ideas, suggestions and/or corrections!
