Story Script - finicky baby

This is a story after telling this Peanut Butter Lips Movietalk.

So I needed one more story to finish out the over-the-top food unit for Spanish 2 (*cough cough* ridiculous vocab list *cough* cough*) before finals.

story structures (past tense for oral storytelling)

And I have been working on a song in my head for about a year and a half for my Youtube Channel that requires me to do some animation and play piano. So as I work on those two things, it's on the back-burner. But the story is about a finicky piñata baby who is hungry and a duck keeps bringing him food.

It's pretty fun and I hope to share it soon.

The oral story structures were to work on some things that we hadn't done a lot intentionally. So I needed to hit "they" forms more in the past tense and to highlight it a little bit.

It was actually a fun story. And I know the difference between "brought "and "took" in Spanish, but sometimes you have to use the structures you have to use to get them in the kids' heads.

Here's the mini-unit if sorts. I don't have any assessments for it since the final is coming up. But I tend to do exit slip quizzes in Spanish over what we have talked about with questions of varying difficulty.


Change for next year:
Change "era demasiado"(it was too...) to "sabía demasiado" (It tasted too...)

Story + Movietalk + Song - "Soy yo" by Bomba Estéreo (Spanish 1)

Still from "Soy yo" (Bomba Estéreo)

After the fun with the previous mini-unit on el chico del apartamento 512, I thought this would be a logical progression and I've wanted to use this song all year ever since seeing that Kara Jacobs did something with it.

So Bomba Estéreo came out with this great song called "Soy yo" (I am me) that is a really positive song about just being yourself. While Kara used it in the beginning of the year for repetitions of "SOY", I preferred to use it later on when my kids would have more language and I could relate it to deeper discussion in class about being who you are.  I know my stuff doesn't hold a candle to hers, but I think my students enjoyed it for the most part, which was nice since it's the end of the year.

Still from "Soy yo" (Bomba Estéreo)

Before showing them the reading, I brought up the first one of the year and told them we could warm up real quick. They read it without any problems. One student said in English, "Wait, that was so easy!" And I responded to him, "It is now. But when we first went over it, it was a little bit hard for you!" I wanted them to realize HOW much they have been exposed to this year in the Target Language and how far they have come in one year.

I really wanted to review some of the physical descriptions vocab, family vocab, places vocab, activities vocab, etc. The thing I love about storytelling (TPRS) is that you can really revisit things all the time because they can come up naturally in stories unlike with a textbook.


My structures were:

• viaja a - s/he travels to  (NEW)
• se ríen de - they laugh at / make fun of (NEW)
• sigue viajando - s/he keeps traveling (revisited)
• se va - s/he leaves (revisited)
• llegan a - they arrive at (revisited)

You might notice how I was reusing some phrases. But I made sure to use a different form of them in this story or added a different "ing" because just going over something once is NEVER enough for acquisition in my experience for lower levels. They need to constantly be exposed and re-exposed to vocabulary/structures throughout the year for long term retention.  The stuff they only hear once (for most kids) will most likely be forgotten to make space for more frequently used language.

Anyways,  here's the rough plan I used with links to the activities mentioned. It's bare bones, but hopefully it will inspire you!

Me cortaron me el pelo - Simple Story + authentic text (past + present)

Past tense for spoken class story.

I found this years ago and experimented with it my 3rd year of using TPRS. See how I used it back then.

This year for Spanish 1, I thought it would be a fun little story to experiment with to further reinforce "can" or "can't".  Some of my students still seemed to be having difficulty with those.

Now I am not saying these are the best structures in the world. Maybe my original ones were better. But I am always experimenting and pushing the language of my students each year to achieve greater acquisition (if that is possible).

still from music video (31 Minutos)

My first years I probably babied them way too much and now I want to see how far we can really get.

And there is this song I fell in love with years ago called: Me cortaron mal el pelo.  It's from a TV show in Chile called 31 Minutos.  And the song sort of has a Sponge-Bob musical quality to it.

The show is pretty crazy. Definitely not comprehensible for my Spanish 1 or 2 students most of the time. But every once in awhile, there is a gem I can use. This is one of those times. So I revised an old story I made years ago and tried it out with my Spanish 1 or 2 students.

So my structures were:

• antes de ir a ___
• before going to... (past)
• debía ir a...
• s/he should go to (past)
• le cortó mal el pelo
• s/he cut his hair badly (past)

And from there we listened to the song as a warm up each day.

And here's the plan if you wanted to see it!

Let me know if you end up using it in your classes and how it goes or what you would recommend!

Selena - el chico del apto 512 - revised

So this is a mini-unit I like to use each year in Spanish 1. I originally got it from Martina Bex years ago as I mention here (from 5 years ago!) and it has evolved over the years to use whatever words I have needed at the moment.

I love how I can incorporate music and also tell a story. This story by Martina actually has inspired me to use other songs to make into storylines. Of course one of my all time favorites each year in Spanish 1 is: Fanny Lu - Celos.  I've also done the same with Sr. Wooly's awesome song: Puedo ir al baño (this year's version).

See this year's activities here for Spanish 1 for "Celos".

So back to "el chico del apartamento 512". It's a song by Selena that has a cute little story about a girl who keeps having guys want to talk to her and she isn't interested. Finally she sees a guy come out of the elevator and he's the man of her dreams!

We listen to the song for a few days as a warm up with different activities to interact with the song in different ways, which preps them for the second week and the actual story that is adapted from the song, thanks to Martina.  I made a powerpoint of it and this year pushed way more language.

I made an embedded reading of about 3 versions or so. If you see phrases in there that aren't in my structures, it's because I had previously used those at some point and was recycling them back in to remind my students of them for additional help binding them to long-term memory.

Here's my basic plan that took about 2 weeks!  Of course remember I also a few other activities in class so we might do the TPR / storytelling part for 25-30 minutes a period. Best of luck if you use it!

It's usually a pretty big hit with my students since there is the music component as well as the compelling story of love and mystery. I am excited that this will build up nicely towards the last story of the year. I am going to adapt Kara Jacob's AWESOME song choice from first semester this year: "Soy Yo" by Bomba Estéreo.

And here's the Selena song if you've somehow never heard it!

Movietalk - Peanut Butter Lips

*Used after movie talk from previous post*

Continuing with the food unit for the chapter with my school's curriculum, my goal is to hit many of the important functional food words. And then students are given the rest of the vocabulary and they can choose to work on their own via Quizlet flashcards.

There is this cute short movie called Peanut Butter Lips that is on Vimeo that I found through someone's resources (can't remember who. Sorry!).

When I saw it I thought it would be great because it deals with that normal day to day teen angst and romance. Things that all people can generally relate to. We can tap into that idea of romance existing. There's another movie I found from Costa Rica recently that would also be fun to do a movie talk about with a similar idea but a surprise ending. (See Amor de Temporada.)

Peanut Butter Lips is somewhat predictable, but I think it's ok sometimes to have predictable when speaking in a foreign language because it can be what grounds the students. And if you're always using unpredictable details in your classes, using something predictable could actually become unpredictable.

A boy wants a kiss from a girl. Some storytelling ideas, add a backstory to the characters. Why does he want a kiss from her? Sure there is the obvious reason why: he likes her. But how long has he had a crush on her. When was the first time he realized he liked her? Was it in the cafeteria when she didn't laugh at him when his tray fell. Or was it when they were in math class together and she knew all the answers and that impressed him? Or what else?

Obviously my ideas are terrible. But maybe the students would have better ideas than mine!  And why does she love peanut butter so much? What is the book about? Who recommended it to her? Why does she keep reading it?

I didn't get too much into this, but I probably should have! Oh well. I just played to my strengths: tell a story, ask a lot of questions, relate it to my students lives and then read about it the following day.  They did fine and seemed interested enough in the story (maybe because they are polite).

Regardless, I thought it fit well into my mini food unit that I have been working on due to curriculum (*cough* textbook *cough cough*) constraints.  

Here is the Google document with links to all I used!

Oh! And I made my first kahoot in the history of the world for a review game.

 Feel free to use it or adapt it for your classes and let me know if you end up using it!

Movietalk - worst date ever

*Last year, I used this movietalk in Spanish 1 at my previous school. Another great example how you can use things at any level; just vary the complexity of your language/vocabulary.*

This year, here is a movietalk that I did with Spanish 2 because while I am supposed to do a food unit, I find that verbs and meaning are what drive any good story, not senseless lists of words!

So I did add a food word or two: jamón. You could easily add in other words and discuss the banquet that he has prepared for his date.

But you might notice in the embedded reading, I am reminding students of clothing words and other verbs that appear are things from previous units in the year. I always try to bring those words back in in new contexts whenever possible to remind students to help with long-term retention.

I wanted to reuse some of the words from the previous "keeps eating" story (see previous post) in a new context as well with s/he brings,  s/he keeps [doing something], & while... s/he learns that.

I also broke it up into a few days. And I really didn't do much with it. Just told the story, had a few readings, did some exit ticket quizzes, etc.  You could expand it to do more with technology if you so desire and review games. But this is the basic stuff!

So without further adieu, enjoy!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12_NNN22Vns-aoaYWd08B3cyU6es2RBU7NB-oR4vhRR8/edit?usp=sharing

And here is a link for quizlet flash cards you could use for Quizlet live: https://quizlet.com/_3ddczg