senoracmt

What Do I Do To Keep Reading Novel?

Isn’t it funny how short students’ attention spans are? By funny I mean… not exactly hilarious! They really keep us on our toes! When I am working through a whole class reader (or any story), I am always looking for follow-ups that give them repeated exposure to the story and its structures in addition to getting them thinking higher order thoughts!

Quip-Lash in Spanish 4

I want to share a couple of follow ups that work well no matter what kind of story you’re working with as a class! Reader, short film, music video… there is narrative everywhere!

The first is an activity I created called Quip-Lash. In this activity, student groups will try to identify the character who “would have said” a particular quote and race to be the first on the X to show the class.

Here is a printable set of Quip-Lash instructions and an example of the game based on Señor Wooly’s new song Una canción original.

QuipLashDownload

The second is an activity I stole from Kristy Placido and then dubbed “The Scene Machine”. (I love naming things… What can I say?) In this activity, groups draw and write descriptions of 4 scenes from the story then move from “game board” to “game board” matching the descriptions with the pictures.

Enjoy these activities and share how they went on Twitter @senoracmt!

Published by senoracmt

I began teaching Spanish in Illinois in 1994. I have taught levels 1-4 in a small rural high school, 8th grade introductory Spanish, Biology 1, and 101 and 102 at the community college level. My Spanish classes are partnered with the community college to offer students 8 semester hours of dual credit on completion of Spanish 4. In 2011 I met Carol Gaab and Kristy Placido and have since co-authored the book "La hija del sastre" with Carol Gaab and authored the novels "La Calaca Alegre", "Bianca Nieves" "Vector," "48 horas", "Bananas", "Sostenible", "Tucán", and "Papálotl" through Fluency Matters and Wayside Publishing. In 2006 I became National Board certified and renewed in 2016. I completed my Masters degree in Spanish education in 2011 and did my research on the use of Understanding by Design to create meaningful cultural units for the language classroom. I am a frequent presenter on this topic, please consider me if you are interested in a workshop on backward design. In 2013 I was named the ICTFL Foreign Language teacher of the year and in 2014 I was selected as CSCTFL's teacher of the year. In November of 2014 I was lucky enough to be one of the five finalists for the ACTFL National Teacher of the Year in San Antonio, TX. Please contact our info@somewheretoshare.com account with any questions you have about the curriculum or PD@somewheretoshare.com with questions about professional development opportunities.

8 comments

  1. Love these two activities. I have never seen them before, but I believe my students will really be engaged wirh them. Thanks so much for all you shared during Wooly Week, and again, for sharing these two videos.

    Reply

  2. Love both of these ideas. Your explanations and class demonstrations on video are very helpful. We are reading Esperanza now and I needed some new ideas! Thank you.

    Reply

  3. Quip-Lash would be an awesome way to get a “flood of input” of 1st person preterite. Thanks so much!

    Reply

  6. I am going to use both this week! I had an idea so that I don’t have to go around and check each board for correctness before groups rotate: the game makers could put random numbers on the back of each sentence card, then make an answer key on a sheet of paper that they hide under the game board. Then when kids have finished matching they could pull out the answer sheet and check their own work.

    Reply

Leave a Reply