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Amiguitos: Spanish 2 Storytime Project

Published by SraSpanglish on

¿Cómo podemos inspirar los niños a leer?

I’m teaming up with my buddy a county over to get kids to want to read–especially in Spanish!

Little Free Libraries are all over,
even in Spanish-speaking countries!

It started with a more local librarian amiga working on a Little Free Libraries. I thought maybe we could contribute by scoping out local demographics and helping stock Sra. Crook’s Little Free Libraries with Spanish books where needed, but of course we’d have to find the right books!

Then Sra. Willis came to visit, and we got to talking about what our kids could do together, maybe ways to build on the LFL project, maybe getting our kids to talk about then write books together.

I also got to thinking about the annual Foreign Language Festival and how books could work in with maybe the  skit competition or even the poetry and cultural bee portions!

Of course I’ve had other book-related project ideas along the way, like TPRS Genius Hour and possibly revisiting Abuela and La Isla or even La llaman America.

The right fit
The main thing I want to underscore with this project, though, is choice: choosing the right book (or books), the right angle, the right end product.

So I have several ideas on directions kids could take this project, so long as they are finding a way to inspire their little buddies–and perhaps others–to read. I’ll have kiddos choose their direction and thus their groups (that’s been working rather well for me), and then let them pick their amiguitos from the intros MY amiga provided! (Super cute, by the way.) Here are some of the possibilities:

  • research and acquire high interest books in Spanish
  • write a picture book about your student (maybe visiting other countries?)
  • create and perform a skit based on your book
  • create book trailers for different books

Common class activities
We started with our TPRS story, “Libros son buenos,” and kids are getting a kick out of Bon Qui Qui (unanimous choice between both classes for the main character’s name). I think it’s really helping reinforce some familiar structures that we’ll need in order to discuss reading with our amiguitos.

It looks like we’ll probably have to do most of our amiguito “meeting” online despite our proximity, but my students will definitely be interviewing kids about their lives and their interests to either match them with the right books or create the perfect book or find the perfect way to grab their attention. And of course amiguitos will be our guinea pigs and have to test out drafts and rehearsals and book samples!

As we go, I also want to keep up with IPA activities, and I’m thinking perhaps some infographs, Pinterest pins/boards, or Amazon summaries (possibly jigsawed for fascinating discussions). They could write reviews for their presentational step, too! It would also be cool if I could get some tips from some of the Little Free Libraries curators in Colombia, Honduras, or Costa Rica! And of course they could discuss further questions and then write back for the rest of their IPA!

In the meantime, groups would meet daily to prepare to impress their amiguitos.


SraSpanglish

Laura Sexton is a passion-driven, project-based language educator in Gastonia, North Carolina. She loves sharing Ideas for integrating Project-Based Learning in the world language classroom, including example projects, lessons, assessment tips, driving questions, and reflection.