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...)

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

Spanish 2 - Broccoli story for daily routines / reflexives

Ever get locked into silly curriculum (or what others call curriculum which is really just a textbook)?

Well if you find yourself having to teach those pesky "daily routines", how about doing it in a new and sillier way?

In my Spanish 2 classes this semester, I am supposed to cover reflexives as well as foods. So I thought, why not combine them!?

So here is what I came up with.

It's about a piece of broccoli that aspired to something more.

I want you to be able to use it in your classes ABSOLUTELY free.  But I do ask that you don't delete the slides that tell that I am the author of the story because it did take me a LONG time and it would make me very sad if someone else took the credit for all of my work.

Click here for a version for Spanish teachers:

If you teach another language or if you'd rather a wordless version to do a picture-talk of sorts with your kids (describing each slide with your own target vocab) click here.

I'd love to hear if you end up using it in a class and how it is received!

If you'd like to use it in your classes but have no idea where to even start consider the following steps:
How to do a Picture Talk:

1. Look at the pictures and look for any underlying themes or words that could be repeated.
(needs, thinks, should, wants, goes, decides, is, etc)

2. Come up with a simple written version of the story that you can tell your students while you go through the pictures.

3. Tell the story to students.

4. While telling the story, to build interest, add dialogue, add voice inflection, ask the students questions about how the character feels, what happens, something parallel in their lives (who would put on a meat dress), etc. While staying in the language in a comprehensible way.

5. Perhaps tell the story again on a different day.

Other Options:
1. tell a super simple version of the story on day 1; a slightly more difficult version day 2; etc

2. tell the story in chunks depending on the length of your classes

3. have a student act out the story

4. come up with your own similar (but different) story about a character wanting to get into a club but maybe they don't have an id or they don't look old enough. So by the time you read this story, it is similar to them and you can compare and contrast the information in this story to their story.

5. have a reading version of the story on another day with fleshed out details; backstories; anything else that will make the story more compelling. I might for my classes add that the broccoli goes to different stores to buy the parts of his wardrobe.

Hope that helps and you're able to have great success in your classes with this story!