I am just starting to dip my toe into the exciting world of CI (comprehensible input). After a lot of research, the activity that intrigued me the most was “Movie Talks.” (Probably because I’m a visual learner!). This week I used the most adorable animated short called “Glued” in my Spanish 1 class to help teach gusta + infinitives. It was a huge success! Read on to see how I took a four minute video and made it into a twenty minute activity all in the target language.
¿Cómo está la madre- bien o mal? ¿Al niño le gusta jugar videojuegos o leer?
Step one was for me to preview the video and create some notes for myself. I found this to be extremely important to maximize the amount of CI the students received. Taking my time allowed me to come up with a variety of questions for each picture. In power point, I inserted snapshots of the video and in the notes section wrote out the questions that I could ask the class. I included a variety of yes/no questions. For example: ¿Al niño le gusta jugar videojuegos? ¿A la madre le gusta jugar videojuegos? ¿Hace sol? ¿Es día? ¿Hay dos niños? Additionally, I asked questions using two options. Examples: ¿Al niño le gusta leer or jugar videojuegos? ¿A los niños les jugsta pasar tiempo juntos o jugar videojuegos (referring to the two kids outside).
After previewing the video using the snapshots, we then watched the video. (Hint- I did not give away the ending during the preview. I stopped at the scene where the mom drops the baseball glove). I paused the video at three points and asked some of the questions again. The students loved the twist at the end when the little boy doesn’t know how to play outside. I asked them ¿Hay un problema? When they answered sí I asked ¿Por qué? while pointing to my question words hung above the board. At this point I wasn’t sure how my students would respond. Much to my delight, students responded No es videojuego. Yay! Not only did this demonstrate that they understood my Spanish, but they are starting to put together Spanish words to express themselves. Yes! It’s working!
Student postviewing worksheet
Finally, I passed out a sheet of paper with five sentences in Spanish that the students had to put in order based on the video. Then, they read a short letter from the mom to the son, and had to write a response from the son’s perspective. In this way, they practiced their interpretative reading skills and interpersonal writing skills.
At the end of the lesson, I asked for sample sentences that they had written. (You could also collect/grade their writing).
For homework, I gave them some of the snapshots from the preview slide show, and they had to write a caption for each one in Spanish.
I can’t express how much I loved teaching this lesson and how engaged my students were. I hope you try it!
(Interested in extending your Movie Talk activity? Check out this post for the Top Ten Secrets.)
Check out my TpT store for tons of other activities.
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