Q & A with a videoclip

A few weeks ago I wrote about a question and answer activity with a song.  This time, I’m using the same technique with a short video clip.  My Spanish III classes are studying Spain and sports, as well as reviewing preterite and imperfect and beginning to work with the present perfect.  This week we are going to focus on Madrid and Barcelona.  I’m introducing Madrid with this short clip done by Real Madrid players.

I’ll have my students watch the clip first, do a short share with partners about what they saw and can remember, and then we’ll watch it again, using this: Madrid video clip, soccer players Real Madrid After briefly reviewing their answers with their partner, I’ll have the students combine to make groups of four, and ask them to retell the information in the video.  They will fold their papers so that they are only able to see the answers (pictured above, with two foils).  They will not see the question prompts.

Hopefully, this brief introductory information will stimulate some natural curiosity, and will lead us to a deeper investigation into tapas, flamenco, and famous sites.

Madrid video clip additional script material.

Fútbol y…….Wavin’ Flag

Having started the “sports/Spain” chapter with Spanish III, and having added lots of material related to jai-alai, la corrida de toros y la geografía de España in the last two years, I decided to expand the part on fútbol this year.  Actually, I was inspired by  Kara Jacobs and her mini unit on El Fútbol y la Copa Mundial.  In 2010, 2011 and 2012, I spent some time at the beginning of the school year with the songs Wavin’ Flag, Waka Waka and Grito Mundial.  I didn’t do that this year, so it seems logical to pick up something in the sports unit related to fútbol.  Today we spent just a bit of time with the song No hay dos sin tres (David Bisbal/Cali y el Dandee) and we talked a bit about the success of Spain in the recent years with fútbol.

The Plan:

Waka Waka will be playing as the students walk into class (it is routine that there is music playing as they walk in), and I may spend a minute or two talking about what they see/understand.  However, the lesson is going to be wrapped around Wavin’ Flag (David Bisbal and K’Naan).  Working with a partner, students will be given the Spanish lyrics to the song (without identifying what the song is).  Each group of two students will have two different colored highlighters to highlight first the nouns, then the verbs.  After a brief check to verify responses, the second step of this activity will be to place the nouns in three categories (people, places, things) and to place the verbs in a fourth column.  Hopefully, this will help them to give more context to the lyrics of the song.  I will spend just a few minutes with the verbs, asking them to look at tenses.  They have not worked with the future tense, so it will be interesting to see what they do with the verb seremos.  It will just be a glancing look….oh….future…do you recognize the infinitive….how do you think the future tense may be formed?

Next, I will give them two sets of sentence strips.  I’m going to use two different colors to separate the first two verses from the final two verses so that they are not overwhelmed by 15 strips of paper.  With their partner, as they listen to the song, they are going to attempt to put the lyrics in order.  However, the lyric strips that I will have given them are not in Spanish: they are loose translations in English.  I will have them attempt to do this without looking at the Spanish lyrics; they will be able to check their order with the Spanish lyrics after listening.

Embedded in this activity will be some vocabulary review, coming from recent units: fé, verdad, países, unir, fuertes, pueblo (as a people), vida, fuego as well as new vocabulary: campeones, comenzar, intentar.Of course, the last step to this activity is going to be to sing the song! Materials can be found here: Wavin Flag activity.
Here is what the lyric strips look like:

Jai-Alai

Every year, after I finish the big music/social awareness unit with Juanes, Juan Luis Guerra and Carlos Baute, my students fear that the most compelling part of the curriculum has been covered.  Fortunately, we go right into a unit about Spain that has several really interesting components.  Yes, it contains grammar (preterite/imperfect yet again and the present perfect), but it also has a great deal about sports and culture of Spain.  I get to introduce them to David Bisbal and his ever popular Bulería, Macaco, Jarabe de Palo, and Pablo Alborán, among others.  We get to discover El País Vasco, Andalucia, Galicia, Cataluña, Castilla La Mancha, Madrid, etc.  AND, we also get to talk about jai-alai and la corrida de toros.

They are always interested in jai-alai, so I’ve tried to expand that part of the unit over the past several years. We will start by taking a look at
El País Vasco with this video:

and probably a bit from the Aventuras Vascas series:

For background information on jai-alai, I use these videos:

The Fastest Game in the World

For sheer silliness, I will include the infamous Steve O and Johnny Knoxville adventure into jai-alai https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwZLlwHp2zI   and also a brief Simpsons clip:

I created a powerpoint on jai-alai Jai- Alai-1-2 and I can share my own personal stories and pictures from games that I have attended. Somewhere along the years, I also was given an actual cesta, pelota and sash.  We leave the classroom, and I always let several students in each class attempt to throw  a ball (a koosh ball, not the actual pelota), with the cesta.  It’s usually something that they enjoy trying.

If you have other jai-alai resources, I would love to know about them.  Or, if you have other favorite activities from teaching about culture in Spain, please share.

10 years of teaching social awareness through music….

I finished my 10th year of teaching social awareness through music with my Spanish III classes this week.  And, as has happened every year since I created this unit, it got longer and more involved, and the kids were terrific!  When I started 10 years ago, I used 3 songs (two from Juanes and one from Juan Luis Guerra).  This year, I used 15 songs (Juanes, Juan Luis Guerra, Carlos Baute and Yerson and Stuard).  I spent about 6 weeks in the unit full time, but I actually started the music as we were finishing a unit about travel.  Within the teaching of this unit, I also incorporated preterite and imperfect, present subjunctive, geography of the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia and South America in general, history of the three focal countries and background information with authentic readings of all of the artists except for Yerson and Stuard.  I plan to post the entire unit here this summer, when school is done; however, you can see the bulk of the work here.

This year, as I have done for the past 6 years, the students all chose one song as their focus, and created their own interpretation of it.  This was the assignment: PBT La Música 2013.

With this unit, I give the only “test” of the year, which is essentially identifying the geographical and historical points for the 3 countries studied in depth, identifying positive and negative vocabulary, choosing their own vocabulary to show me what they have learned, writing what they know about Juanes, and using the lyrics of the songs to support the themes of the unit.  The last part of the “test” is to let me know what they may have gotten from this unit.  Here are some of their responses.

Additionally, I had some students create extra things, and I had one class, my smallest, ask to create their own Bandera de Manos.  I’m posting some of the projects below as well as pictures of the Bandera de Manos and some shirts that students created.

Minas Piedras 2

Q & A with song lyrics

I was wrapping up the very large Juanes section of my music/social unit with my Spanish III classes this week when I decided to include one more song, one that I had not used in previous years: Segovia.  I have used a different tactic with each song in the unit, so I wanted something new for this one, too.  The lyrics of the song include some words that were very new, but important to the song, as well as words that we had been including in our unit but may not have been fully grasped by everyone.  I’ve bolded the words we have been including in our study below, and I have italicized the words that were brand new.

Un once de noviembre a las siete de la noche
Hombres armados dispararon sin reproches
Contra la gente del municipio de Segovia
Llovía cántaros, la plaza estaba llena
Varias granadas estallaron en cadena
El nordeste antioqueño todo rojo se tornó
Es una canción por los que se murieron allá en Segovia
Y por todas las familias que fueron víctimas en Segovia
No van a desaparecer
Nunca jamás de la memoria
No van a desaparecer
Aunque los quieran desaparecer

Since the song very specifically tells the story of what happened in Segovia on the 11th of November, and one of our goals in Spanish III is to be able to narrate a story, I decided to pull the details of the story out of the song that would then become the answers to a series of questions.  I first had my students watch the video with the lyrics.  When it was done I asked them what they knew.  They quite accurately were able to tell me people died in November (they mixed up Nov. 11 and 7:00 at night), that there were victims, that it was raining, and that armed men shot. A few in each class were able to guess that grenades were involved and that they didn’t want memories to disappear.  Segovia por Juanes

Next I gave them the paper on which all of the key information had been placed randomly.  They listened to the song again (just the first minute and a half) without seeing the lyric video, and I asked them to put a check by every phrase that they heard.  After that, I had them count how many they had heard.  While some had only heard 5 – 7 of the phrases, most had heard 10 -13 (there are 13 phrases in total).  We then went through the phrases and they told each other what they meant, checking with me when they were unsure.  I then finished playing the song while they answered the questions at the bottom.  After having done that, they were very capable of narrating the story of what had happened in Segovia.

I liked this activity, and the students were actively engaged in it.  I have decided to apply the same type of exercise to a listening activity that my Spanish IV students will be doing on Monday, using a news video from BBC Mundo.  Música para alejarse de la violencia

La Fiesta de Coctel, Part 2

I wrote earlier that I was going to experiment with the “cocktail party” concept another time. My students have been asking for the repeat of the activity and this is the week that it will happen. Unlike the first time, when I assigned each of them a famous musician, this time I will be taping, unseen by the student, the name of an historical figure on each of their backs.  I’ll be choosing from some of these names:

• Benjamin Franklin
• Albert Einstein
• Frank/Orville Wright
• Jonas Salk
• Paul Revere
• William Shakespeare
• Charles Dickens
• Alexander Graham Bell
• Julius Caesar
• Charles Darwin
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Mohandas Gandhi
• Thomas Jefferson
• John F. Kennedy
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Bill Cosby
• Bill Gates
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Nelson Mandela
• Ernest Hemingway
• Mark Twain
• Marco Polo
• Vincent Van Gogh
• Abraham Lincoln
• Stephen Colbert
• Jackie Robinson
• Babe Ruth

• Maya Angelou
• Oprah Winfrey
• Harriet Tubman
• Hillary Clinton
• J.K. Rowling
• Kate Middleton
• Princess Diana
• Elizabeth II
• Mary Lincoln
• Amelia Earhart
• Susan B. Anthony
• Mother Teresa
• Pocahontas

Inspired by a post by Amy Alenord about Conversation Circles, I created this document, pictured below, ( Nuestra Fiesta de Coctel Historical Figures) to aid and direct the students with their questioning and self assessment. Before beginning “the party”, I will have each student write the questions that they believe will be helpful or necessary to discover what name is taped on their backs.  I plan on allowing about 30 minutes for the actual “party”/conversation, and will then give them a few minutes to consider their self assessment.  I will be circulating throughout the activity with the hor d’oeuvres (crackers, cheese, etc.) and “wine” (sparkling grape juice).  I should have the opportunity to listen to each of them.I’d love to hear from others who have done similar activities or who have suggestions.  Thanks.

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Vocabulary Trees

My Spanish III students are in the middle of the unit that I loosely refer to as the music unit.  So far we have covered  La República Dominicana , Juan Luis Guerra, a bit of Haiti, Somos el Mundo and are now working with Colombia and Juanes.  The unit involves a lot of work with geography, historical perspective and social commentary through song (Ojalá que llueva café, El costo de la vida, La llave de mi corazón, Bachata en Fukoaka, A Dios le pido, La camisa negra, La historia de Juan, Sueños, and Somos el mundo).  I’ve done several other posts about this unit (Minas Piedras, La Historia de Juan, Ojala que Llueva Cafe).  By this point in the unit, the students have been seeing, hearing and using vocabulary related to the music and themes for three weeks.  It is time to pull it all together and see how much of it is “sticking” in their heads.  I don’t use vocabulary lists and I don’t do vocabulary quizzes.  I am a firm believer in not learning vocabulary to merely take a quiz and then forget it.  I am constantly enforcing the concept that each student will be carrying his/her own unique vocabulary list with words that may differ from  another student.

We’ve been working with Cognates, such as

• Prostitución                                                          
• Privilegio                                                              
• Traficante/traficando                                          
• Mutilar                                                                 
• Suicidarse                                                            
• Atrocidades                                                         
• Abuso                                                                  
• Crimen                                                           
• Abandonar                                                            
• Corrupción                                                            
• Economía                                                              
• Asesinar   
• Robar                                                          
• Gobierno                                                             
• Libertad                                                     
• Soldados

and words that are related to others that we know

• Amar/amor
• Esperar/esperanza         
• Hambre, hambriento
• Morir/Muerte
• Pobre/Pobreza
• Rico/Riqueza
• Sangre/sangriento
• Sentir/sentimientos
• Soñar/Sueño
• Sufrir/sufrimiento
• Temer/temor

Vivir/Vida   

and words that are completely new

• Agradecer/dar las gracias                                    
• Arsenales (which looks like it should be a cognate, but students don’t know what an arsenal is)  
  
• Asustado/a                                                           
• Derechos                                                              
• Disparar                                                              
• Dolor                                                                    
• Ejército                                                                
• Esclavitud/esclavo                                                
• Esconder                                                              
• Guerra                                                                 
• Herir/Heridos                                                      
• Huérfano                                                              
• Injusto (no es justo)                                             
• Justo                                                                   
• Lamentar/sentir
• Matar                                               
• Minas terrestres (minas tierras)                          
• Oportunidad
• Paz                                                    
• Pena                                                                     
• Perdón                                                                  
• Secuestrar/secuestro                                          
• Sin techo/sin hogar                                                                           
• Suerte/tener suerte                                            
• Temer/tener miedo

To further enforce what we have been accumulating over the past three weeks, I put them in groups and give each group a topic, such as Violencia, Cosas Ilegales, Cognates, Infinitivos, Cosas Malas, Descripciones, Los Niños y los sentimientos.  It is obvious that there is considerable overlap within the categories.  Then, I give each group a tree outline and  2 minutes to add appropriate vocabulary to the tree.  I use a tree because the next song and theme that we will be working with is Minas Piedras, and there is a very significant verse in the lyrics that will help tie all the themes together.

Los árboles están llorando
Son testigos de tantos
años de violencia
el mar esta marrón
mezcla de sangre con la tierra

After two minutes, each group passes their tree to another group, and I give that group an additional minute to add to their new category and tree. We pass again, and eventually I have them identifying the vocabulary that they see and asking each other questions about the words.  The trees are then posted in the room for a visual reminder of our expanding vocabulary.  Here are some examples:This visual representation of vocabulary by theme could be done with any number of themes.