For KWLA 2011: Media from Reel to Real

Here's my Prezi for my Friday a.m. session, Media from Reel to Real.

Media from Reel to Real on Prezi

A high-interest exercise for imperfect/pasado continuo

In my class, my students know that I don't care if they know what imperfect or preterite means. Often we call them descriptive past and sudden past, because that's the best way in my opinion to contrast them.  The trick with putting them together is to get students to use one when they're describing ongoing action and switch to the other when they want to say what happened.  We do a story, where they fill in the details, in which our two characters were going somewhere (a birthday party for the horse's mother) in some way (on an airplane) doing something (eating chocolate straws) with someone else doing something (Miley Cyrus not wearing enough clothing) when something happens (the plane fell) and while that was happening other things happened (the people screamed, the horse pushed Miley Cyrus out of the plane).

I thought about using children's books as a follow-up exercise, having them describe what was happening on the page.  I did that very quickly at the end of a class, as an oral activity, and I pushed them to make the exercise very rapid so they didn't have time to get bored, but I thought, if I do this again they're going to get bored with it as a writing exercise.  But it's almost March Madness.  We live in KY where basketball is king. I have 2 girls who will probably have a volleyball scholarship in college.  I've been hyping up the upcoming World Cup. What if I find amazing sports videos, culturally relevant, in Spanish, to use instead?

So these are what we found.  Manu Ginobli, the most accomplished Latin American basketball player ever, beats Serbia & Montenegro at the buzzer in the 2004 Olympics (make sure your students watch the clock & the score box).  The USA scores on a fabulous corner kick in a World Cup qualifier vs. Mexico. Peru's volleyball team makes an amazing play in their bid for a spot in the 2010 World Championship games in Japan after their star actually kicks the ball--I didn't even know that was legal.

We watched the videos through, used sudden past to say what happened in the big moment of the game, and then paused the video in different areas.  We named some random person on the screen, and each student had to use the continuous past (our focus of the week) to say qué estaba haciendo esa persona. We did this 3 or 4 times for each video and I took the writing as a daily grade. It worked beautifully.  My students could have watched the videos a dozen times so they didn't even care that they were technically doing a grammar writing exercise.

Here are the videos:

Share with your students the 1st winner of Viva el sueño

What teenager doesn't like American Idol? The Latin version of American Idol is Viva el Sueño, broadcast on Univisión and just ending its first season. Here's a great video to share with your students of the winner, Ana Isabelle. Spanish 1 students can understand whom she's thanking, and who each speaker is based on the titles at the bottom, and beyond that there's a lot of great verb switching, vocabulary, communicative tools like "bien (adj)" and "no se crean." Very high-interest, lots of accents and great language!



Here's the video of her victory song:


And of course I have to post Luis Fonsi singing "Llueve por dentro" on the finale:

Two songs + resources for Ojalá + subjunctive

The word Ojalá is, in my estimation, the only 'verb' in Spanish that isn't conjugated. It finds its roots in Arabic, meaning "May allah grant that." In any case, in Spanish it's always followed by subjunctive, and here are two songs to help work with that.

The first is with present, Ojalá que llueva café, by Juan Luis Guerra. It's one of those songs that can lead you in a hundred different directions. It's a bit controversial from what I understand, and is a perspective on the life of the poor in the Dominican Republic.

I found some interesting blogging on the song. For example, read what José has to say about the song and its meaning. Then, use this cool site by Ms. Nelson to work with the song, complete with lyrics linked to pictures to aid in comprehension.
I just found out that the song was re-recorded by Café Tacvba, with some killer fiddling:


The other song unfortunately does not have much in the way of resources but is the best I've heard to work with Ojalá + past subjunctive or just past subjunctive by itself (Si volvieras a mí by Josh Groban is beautiful to me but not so appealing to most of my high-schoolers). It's Ojalá pudiera borrarte by Maná. The video used to be on YouTube but was removed, and now is only available in cheesy photo collages, especially since I can't get imeem to search anything at the moment.

Ojalá que you enjoy them.

A song just for @mamitati

This is a special post out to Tati, amazing bilingual mami blogger at WannaJugarWithMigo?

I caught this song just the other day and I LOVE it! It's a Christian song (I teach at a Christian school). Well, most of my high-schoolers were not as impressed as I was, but it'll be fun to teach to my Zoe anyway. :)

David Bisbal's YouTube channel

David Bisbal is all over the music news lately for his whirlwind promotion of his new album, Sin Mirar Atrás (and it doesn't hurt that his esposa Elena is expecting a little princesita). To stay up-to-date on what he's doing these days, follow him on Twitter @davidbisbal and check out his muy chévere YouTube channel. This link goes to the video for a really beautiful song on the album, Mi Princesa. Here's the embeddable video, though it likely won't be on YouTube for long.

While you're there, take a listen to his chart-topping Esclavo de Sus Besos and the rare not-a-love-song reggaetón collaboration (in his pre-curly-hair days) with Wisin and Yandel, Torre de Babel.
And hey, if you (and/or your students) just can't get enough of David Bisbal and his postnasal interdental fricatives, he's got a blog!

Correction on Pin Pon in Shrek

I blogged about the brilliant use of Pin Pon in the Shrek film (to replace the culturally irrelevant reference to the Muffin Man) here. But since then it appears that video has been removed. The clip is currently available here. (As an added correction I should mention that the tale is actually from a Chilean children's program--not Puerto Rican.) Enjoy!

Story and songs for subjunctive: indefinite/negative antecedent

Subjunctive by reason of indefinite or negative antecedent... doesn't that sound fun? This is my story for this reason of subjunctive. We do this in the spring semester of Spanish 2.
Our principal wakes up in the morning and goes to school. He asks the woman at the front desk, "I'm looking for the student who... (fill in talents of students in your class)" Ex: "Busco al estudiante que toca la guitarra mejor que Santana." (This is diagrammed/drawn on the left of the board.)
The woman at the front desk doesn't know (name). She calls the teacher over the intercom and says, "Do you have a student who... (toque la guitarra mejor que Santana)." (This is diagrammed/drawn in the middle.)
The teacher in the classroom has no clue who (name) is. She says, "There's no student here who (toque la guitarra mejor que Santana)."
We go through the sequence for at least 3, preferably four talents. By the third, maybe by the second, students should be making the subjunctive switch for you, especially if you write the final vowels in the verbs in a different color, even though they don't know why.
At the end of the story, it turns out that the reason none of the students were at the school was that (principal) was at (rival school), and actually it was all a dream!
After the story, I draw a head with a check mark on the left, a head with a question mark in the middle, a head with an X on the right. Students fairly readily grasp, "En su mente, sí existe." "En su mente, ¿existe esa persona? No sabe." "En su mente, la persona no existe."

The two songs that go along with this are La Traviesa by Juan Luis Guerra, and Esto es lo que soy by Jesse y Joy.

Remember to ask, ask, ask. If you present them with the input the right way, they'll figure it out themselves, but you can't assume they know it until they tell you so.

Most of all, have fun and make it fun. Fun = motivating.

We must not ignore the Paz Sin Fronteras (video)

Juanes's Paz Sin Fronteras concert was such a big deal on the world politics scene (he's more deserving of the Nobel PP than Obama, but don't get me started on that, lol) that it would be a shame for a Spanish teacher to pass up the opportunity to encourage world citizens in our classrooms. Here's a videoclip I found on YouTube that's one of the best. It's short, interesting, summative, with incredibly clear audio and IMO the woman's Spanish is uber-comprehensible through most of the video. It almost sounds like she thinks she's talking to language learners!

Video with por, haber, past participles, commands, from Coca Cola

You just never know what you'll find surfing through corporate websites. Yes, sometimes you end up getting a cow on a motorcycle through an obstacle-ridden farm on Mundonick.com, and that's fun, but corporate websites often contain videoclips that are pure gold for Spanish teachers. They're exactly what we need--short, high-impact, high-interest, and repetitive.

Go check out this human-interest video on Coca Cola Mexico's site. It's got multiple uses of por, haber + past participles, and commands, and could be a launching pad into conditional: if you were giving advice to a newborn, what would you say? what would you tell him that you would do differently?
Another interesting topic is how Coca Cola talks about finding happiness.

I would have explored classroom 2.0 a lot sooner.

Songs for the elusive 3rd pers. sing. preterite

Certain things are super easy to find songs for. Reflexives. Present tense, particularly yo y tú. Preterite yo y tú. That's about all love songs do, right? Talk about you and me in the past, lol. But the other day my colleague asked if I knew of any songs for 3rd-person preterite, and that was tough. I went through my whole lyrics file (which I'll email to you if you DM me @wandermami on twitter) and I did find two songs. The first I don't recommend for below Spanish 3. The song is Mojado by Ricardo Arjona. It's very politically charged and full of the poetic layers of meaning typical of Arjona. Please note that videos on YouTube were not uploaded by SonyBMG--I'll keep my eyes out for that one.

But my colleague teaches Spanish 1 and 2 so my quest continued. I did finally come across a good one--Arroyito by Fonseca. It has 9 occurrences of 3rd person preterite, 7 of them unique. And it's a good song by a good guy with a good video with no copyright problems.

Abecedario video from YouTube

Turns out my school blocks tu.tv as 'adult/mature content' so here's the same video on YouTube if your situation is the same.

Hysterical video involving the abecedario à la Who's on First

Tu.tv is the Spanish version of YouTube and this was one of their headlined videos this week. SO funny. This is absolute gold even for Spanish 1... I mean, it involves the ABC's and 'la sé' what could be more Spanish 1??

Keeping your eyes open for gold nuggets

My husband is a bit of a tennis buff and so we were watching the US Open final yesterday and watched Argentinian Juan Martín del Potro defeat Federer in a stunning upset. In the awards ceremony, del Potro gave a short speech in Spanish (at 1 mins 15 sec). I thought, that'd be very interesting to my class--I have a tennis player in my AP class--and I wondered if it would be up on YouTube. Do I love YouTube? Yes I do.

This is authentic audio you could even use in Spanish 1-- he's thanking family members. What Spanish 1 class is complete without a lesson in family words?

CNN launches Latino in America

Follow them on twitter-- @LIACNN

A correction on the correction of La Frase Tonta

I blogged about my favorite 5a Estación song, La Frase Tonta de la Semana, here and here. The second time I reported that the music video had been taken down for violation of copyright. Good news, Sony BMG has the videoclip oficial up on the La Quinta Estación YouTube channel, along with the duet with Alex Ubago of the same song.

On a side note, I think this new duet between Natalia and Marc Antony is fabulous, and I thought the video was going to be very interesting... until the sex scene ruled it inappropriate. Blah. Wish they wouldn't do that.

I am in technology heaven

Kids motivated by technology?
Want to get them creating AND listening to their own Spanish?
This could be the most revolutionary tool I have seen for my classroom in a long time.

I made this video in about twenty minutes.

I love crossover songs

I love crossover songs. That's what I call those songs that have so much good material in them that they're great from Spanish 1 to AP. Fanny Lu's new hit Tú No Eres Para Mí is one of those. It's especially good for uses and conjugations of ser. There's the title, which is of course a Spanish 1 level comment, all the way to fuera in unreal if clauses. As usual her video is too skanky for my class, but enjoy the songs. A girl making fun of a guy's cheesy pick-up lines? Super fun and lots of good grammar points. Enjoy.

Pan's Labyrinth, without subtitles (imperfect vs. preterite)

I found the intro to Pan's Labyrinth on YouTube, without subtitles! I'm totally against showing subtitled videos in class--if I can't concentrate on the Spanish audio, I know my students can't. But I love the intro to this movie, because it's such a good example of imperfect vs. preterite--this is what things used to be like when the girl lived in the under world, but then 'one day'... and every verb after that is preterite. Anything that can make the distinction clearer is a gem.

I'm pretty sure all the movies uploaded on YouTube in their entirety are big violations of copyright, but I consider this like the 'short portion for educational purposes' exception in print copyright law. I only show it up to the point where the girl escapes to the real world. And then I encourage my students to see the film... if their parents will okay it and agree with me that though it's rated R, the linguistic and historical significance outweigh the war-related violence (though I will say the torture scene is a bit much for me).

Raimundo, the bilingual Latin American snail

Ever heard of Sorpresa TV?

It's kid shows, only in Spanish!

Among the many shows is The Wumblers, featuring Raimundo, a bilingual Latino snail. You can watch episodes online. Really, you've gotta check it out. Talk about fodder for early Spanish learners!!

Also check out the site's section of bilingual games.