Mexican Independence and the Imperfect Tense

History and grammar are not always the most obvious hook for capturing students’ attention, but when it’s history and grammar in a cartoon, who wouldn’t be hooked?

This year Spanish II and III decided they would win first place at the language festival in April by finally teaching people the difference between Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence Day.

So while the Spanish III kids in fourth period worked on the script, the rest of the class got a little background on both through authentic infographs:

And cartoons! First of all, did you know there is a 2010 full-length movie about Mexican independence? Héroes verdaderos is available on YouTube in its entirety! We didn’t watch the whole thing, but we got into the revolutionary spirit listening for key words in “Con fe en el corazón”: the goal was to pick out all of the important words they thought they heard then narrow it down to the ONE that best summed up the message of the song.

I had them let the video just wash over them the first time. Confession: I had hoped they’d recognize some words as it played, but really it worked out better as sort of a pre-viewing exercise. I didn’t do a full-on movie talk, but we discussed some salient points about el Cura Hidalgo’s life then dove right into to grammar part.

In their notebooks

I had them create a simple T-chart, labeled ía on one side and aba on the other. (I said the word “imperfect” for those hungry for that sort of thing, but mostly I side with Sra. Cottrell on not teaching a new language for teaching about language before you get TO the language.) I told them (yes, in the target language) there were (hay) 4 ías and 6 abas. HINT: they will not be able to hear them on their own; you WILL have to pause the video for each one, and probably replay at least once.

In the T-chart, they were to record:

1. The form of the verb they heard (e.g. conocía, gustaba)
2. The present tense form of the verb, and 
3. An extra space we’d talk about later (spoiler, it was going to be for the infinitive form)

PACE

So I started the video then paused when an imperfect word popped up. I replayed it, and when someone was able to pick out at least whether it was ía or aba and guess at it, I wrote it under the write column on the board. Then I would ask, “¿Cómo se dice ___ en el presente?” Now, they hadn’t heard some of these words before, in imperfect OR present tense, so they were kind of guessing around–which is GOOD. I always tell them guessing is good for their brains, as long as we verify ASAP. (I’d always write the correct form on the board to model.) The guessing helps them start to notice the patterns.

So really what I was doing was a sort of higgledy piggledy PACE lesson as we discussed, Presenting the verbs with the Hidalgo cartoon and drawing Attention not only with the chart, but by connecting to prior knowledge and familiar forms. I also paused to do some questioning with some of the new words in present tense but also work in a few object pronouns under the radar (“¿Mucha gente TE respeta? ¿Mucha gente le respeta a Sra. Dixon?”–hint: EVERYONE respects Sra. Dixon…it’s fun contrasting with others in position of power though…)

I did have students add one more verb form–the infinitive–for each entry, to really draw that Attention to the patterns forming before them. You may notice that we had plural and singular words in both columns, too. That made for a nice little review of that present tense structure that we hadn’t emphasized much the year before, but it could also have confused the issue, the rules at play.

So with the imperfect, present, and infinitive forms of each verb, it was up to the students to Co-construct and describe the grammar rules they were observing.

To help, I said they had to include the following in their description:

• past
• present
• plural
• -ar
• -er
• -ía
• -aba

Note: make sure you go over some co-constructed rules together. For those who are truly lost, it helps to have one rule that everyone can copy, just to make sure their guesses are appropriately redirected.

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