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!

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!

Lots of Spanish 1 TPRS resources

So after the relative success of my last post about what I did with the commercial: "Me voy de casa", I decided to go ahead and share a majority of things that I did last year in my Spanish 1 classes.

Feel free to open the folder, download things to your Google Drive or to your computer and enjoy!

My hope is that you can find a new activity or a new spin on an old activity you have used. Or maybe something to inspire you as you try out more communicative-based teaching via TPRS or Comprehensible Input methods!

I tried to include a plethora of things to give you an idea of what you could do in your classes as well to push kids towards proficiency by de-emphasizing grammar in actual grammar lessons each day (Don't worry, I, Señor Jordan, still teach grammar to my kids. But it's more of a back-door approach!)

Let me know what you think and happy perusing!

So click here to see my google drive folder (minus Agentes Secretos stuff since some of that has images from the teacher's guide by the very talented Mira Canion).

*Disclaimer* Please don't judge me too much for how I might have done an activity. I am far from an expert on teaching via TPRS. But I figure the best way to get better is to share with others who might be farther back on the path to encourage them and maybe the more experienced people can offer a suggestion or two!