La Tomatina in Spanish Class

Are you looking for an engaging topic to start your school year in Spanish class? How about a festival where people literally have a giant food fight with tomatoes? La Tomatina is a yearly event that takes place in Buñol, Spain at 11:00am on the last Wednesday of August. For me, this falls during the first full week of school. I already decided when I planned out my tentative year curriculum that I would start the year with a Tomatina mini unit in Spanish 2. Since then I decided that Spanish 3 will also join the fun and do the unit as well. (I was waiting to see if anyone who took my Culture & Civilization Spanish 1+ would be staying with Spanish 3, since that class already did this unit). As a #deptof1 any time that I can overlap plans for levels and just differentiate, it really helps lighten the planning load. For those of you who have been following my back to school posts and saw my 1st weeks of Spanish 1, here are my 1st weeks plans for Spanish 2 & 3.

My 1st 2 weeks of Spanish 2 & 3 are as follows:

1st short week Find Someone Who + extensions and free write (Friday – Spanish 3 – El Internado & Spanish 2 – Verba viernes)
1st full week – Sp2 & Sp3 – Tomatina mini unit (below)

Tomatina Mini Unit

I am a firm believer that if you find something that is well done and works for you and your students, do it! This means that a lot of what I do in my classes has been purchased from excellent teacher authors who save me precious time, that I can use to hang out with my two little boys. This means that every single thing that I am using in this mini unit was created by someone else. I am going to stretch this unit to four days, but you could do a one day lesson if that is all the time you have to work with.

The bulk of what I am using for my unit is from La Tomatina Cultural Unit from Martina Bex. If you only have one day, or want to use it with younger students, I would recommend La Tomatina – Simple Reading from Martina Bex.

Day 1

La Tomatina 2017 – Official Promo Video – (Stop with 10 seconds left to avoid the alcoholic beverage)
Personalized discussion questions from Cultural Unit to get students introduced and engaged in the topic.
La Tomatina – Simple Reading from Martina Bex – Students will work alone or in pairs to read the simple reading and answer the true/false questions. I will then read it to the class, discussing as we go, as well as discussing the answers.
If there is extra time – students explore La Tomatina – official site & La Tomatina – cartel

Day 2

Follow La Tomatina Cultural Unit – Martina Bex
Embedded reading #1
Video activity
Embedded reading #2
Movietalk (if time – or move to the next day)

Day 3 – La Tomatina (30 agosto)

Since it is the actual day of the event, we will have our own Tomatina, using the Snowball Fight activity from Amy Lenord. Students will be given red paper and will write something about themselves in Spanish. Students will crumple the paper and with the official music playing they will have their own snowball fight for one minute. Once the time is up, students will each pick up a piece of paper, and we will gather in a circle. I will read these out in Spanish, and students will guess who they are describing. When students return to their seats, they will do a quick free write about what they learned about their classmates.
Embedded reading #3 from La Tomatina Cultural Unit

Day 4

Video activities from La Tomatina Cultural Unit
La Tomatina – Storytelling Video – Spanish Cuentos
Mini Writing Assessment – Students write as much as they can about the festival.

(On Friday Spanish 3 will watch El Internado & Spanish 2 will watch Living on $1 in preparation for their Esperanza unit which will start the following week)