To finish the year, Spanish 4 is reading the novel La Calaca Alegre by Carrie Toth.
More Blog posts about using La Calaca Alegre in Spanish class
Chapter 6
- We reviewed chapters 1-5 from the week before using the fun marker partner game from Cynthia Hitz. I read true/false statements from the first 5 chapters & students have goofy rules to show their comprehension.
- Students read chapter 6 and we discussed it as a class.
- We used the videos from the teacher’s guide to do a video tour of the neighborhood of Pilsen in Chicago.
Chapter 7
- We used the phrase “meterse en líos” to talk about students past history of getting in trouble using an activity from the teacher’s guide.
- We read and discussed the chapter.
- We reviewed the conditional tense and students did a guided writing on what their reaction to Carlos would be in they were his aunt and uncle.
Chapter 8
- Students shared their free writes from the day before with their tables, reviewing and discussing once again what they would have done it that situation.
- Per the class request, i read the chapter to them, and we discussed as we went.
- Students then wrote and discussed their prediction of what would happen in the second half of the book.
Chapter 9
- We discussed predictions as a class and then read and discussed chapter 9.
- Students completed a web quest from the teacher’s guide about Jeff Zimmerman murals.
- We went through the Murales de Pilsen slideshow from the teacher’s guide.
Chapter 10
- We started this chapter after a long weekend, so I divided up the 9 chapters we had read so far. My nine students were each given a piece of computer paper and were responsible for drawing and writing what happened in their chapter. These were then posted around the room in a gallery walk style, so students could walk through what had happened so far.
- Before reading we discussed the phrase “meter la pata,” using times we had put our foot in our mouth.We read and discussed the chapter.
- Students completed phrases from the starter “If I were Carlos,” once again focusing on using the conditional.
Hopefully by next week I will be able to post Teaching La Calaca Alegre – Chapters 11-15 once we finish the book!
