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EPIC Telenovela PBL Unit & Final Exam

Published by SraSpanglish on

Every language teacher should attend an unconference. Better yet, every language teacher should attend an unconference with other language teachers.

First of all, just being around people who are committed to growth–their students’ and their own–is just the booster most of us need about this time of year. And those nagging questions you’ve had about what you’re doing and WHY, those niggling areas of insecurity in your own instructional practice: the unconference is your chance to hammer them out (just be sure you’re not hammering yourself).

I went into TELLcollab Nashville knowing I wanted to do better with culture and student engagement outside of class. And thanks to TELL’s EPIC framework (and @profepj3), I came out with the seeds for a plan to address both!

You can make your own EPIC growth plan with resources at TELLproject.org!

ENVISION your outcomes

I commissioned my daughter to make my vision more visual

At the end of TELLcollab Day 1, we all picked a self-assessment area to focus on. I picked Planning because I knew I have not been nearly intentional enough about drawing attention to culture in my classes this year. In fact, when I had some local colleagues come in and observe, it’s what they picked up on as an area of growth for me too.

So here’s my objective:

“I will provide opportunities for my students to engage in cultural observation and analysis.”

But my ultimate goal? I wanted to make this my last unit for the year AND use it to set up the final “exam” IPA. Conveniently enough, that’s also exactly what I need for the last piece of my ASW puzzle this year, too!

PLAN your route to success

Strategies

I’m sure I will be adding more strategies as I go (I would LOVE more blog response suggestions especially!), but here is what I’m starting with.

 

    • collect words and sentences from video clips
    • highlight/guess/check interpretation
    • view, react to telenovela clips with Nearpod
    • BLOGS
You can get a copy–with sentence starters!–in my TPT store



    • daily scene summary, prediction & response blogs
    • daily response:
      • Retell from a character’s PoV
      • Advice from a character
      • Advice to a character
      • Telenovela cliche count
      • Character theme song and analysis
    • weekly tic tac toe activities
  • small group & class discussion
  • brilliant ideas from Cristina Zimmerman, Bethanie Drew:
    • ¿Quién lo dijo? (quotes from scene)
    • Language structure PACE
    • Story sequencing
    • Who am I? 20 questions character guessing (Headbanz)
    • Character connections diagram
  • script & create telenovela trailers

I think it might also be fun/beneficial to interview native speakers about telenovelas (WeSpeke or local), but I’m not sure it’ll fit in the time we have left.

Resources

I’ll likely be adding more as I go here, too, but a little googling, a powerhouse PLN, and some adventurous local colegas have gotten me off to a good start:

IMPLEMENT your plan

Implementation is underway, but pending completion of the year, here’s what I anticipate it will look like:

  • April 19 – “Caperucita Roja” + Wikipedia preview
  • April 20-21 – Telenovela article & Public Service Announcement IPA
  • April 26 – May 5 – Watch & respond to segments from episodes 1-3
  • May 10 – Telenovela review IPA (reading)
  • May 11 – Telenovela interview or trailer IPA (listening)
  • May 12 – Telenovela trailer script
  • May 13 – Telenovela trailer video editing
  • Exam Day – Telenovela film festival (with Q&A)

COLLECT evidence

Some time in June I’ll need to submit evidence for the NCASW that my students can “Identify information about target culture perspectives and practices” better than they could when they started my class.

I think we’ll start with the PSA storyboards where they gave 3 reasons you–yes, YOU!–should watch telenovelas. So far their reasons are pretty generic (I told them language teachers love to hear the words “cultura” and “vocabulario” and “aprender”). At the end, their trailers should not only be a lot more detailed–with specific examples either from Cuidado con el ángel or from another show they decide would be better to watch based on the telenovela types they read about and entradas they watch.

If the trailers don’t go according to plan, their blogs should also be a rich source of observations and indignation about what happens in the telenovela each day. Their summaries and predictions will certainly fulfill the “observation” part of my EPIC goal, and then pausing to reflect weekly on what they’ve seen should not only take care of my EPIC goal, but also my ASW objective!


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.

2 Comments

Agirre · April 22, 2017 at 12:47 pm

Great post and resources to improve Spanish!

Agirre · April 23, 2017 at 2:39 pm

Great post and resources to improve Spanish!

Comments are closed.