From outrageous input to PROFOUND conversations! CI is the BEST!

Let me tell you… Students LOVE the Wooly song Ya Está Muerto. LOVE…. They sing it in the halls (what Wooly song DON’T they sing in the halls!?)  When we play Mafia, they randomly exclaim “ya está muerto” (he is already dead) at different points. They also always suggest that people should be allowed to come back to life, we simply need to put their corazon en una mochila (heart in a backpack).

Side awesomeness worth noting: Next week I am adding a new “option” to the doctor character in Mafia which will allow just that. I am going to allow the doctor to have a slight twist, sort of like like the “witch” in Loup Garou (which I swear I will blog about soon but I have a few videos on my YouTube of it already like this one, or this one). At one point, when the doctor wakes up, RATHER than choosing who they want to “save” they can choose to OPERATE on someone who is already dead. They will perform an operation and “save” the person that “ya estaba muerto”  by putting their heart in a backpack. Since I allow students to be “ghosts” when they die in Mafia, and they continue playing with their eyes closed, they will not know who the doctor was or that they are being saved until I am doing the story telling when I wake everyone up. Also, obviously for this reason, the doctor can only save someone that chose to be a ghost and not an angel. YAYYY for novelty!!!

Ok sooooo last year Kristin Bruno Archambault posted this article on a Facebook page and then she posted an adaptation that she wrote for her upper level classes (which now I can’t find the link to 🙁 )  I had to write a different version for my Middle schoolers.  I wrote this last year and used it again with new classes this year. I did it after they were SUPER obsessed with Ya Está¡ Muerto and after we had really done the song justice (in all of it’s weirdness and glory). Then I printed these out. One for each student, and we read it together. You can use lots of different reading strategies to tackle it. In one class, I read, while students highlighted each word as I said it. In another class, they read it together in pairs. Here is a video of this on my Instagram. Afterwards, I had students answer questions on this document from Google Classroom (yay for no paper!).

I have had this blog in a draft form forever, but then tonight on Facebook, Stephanne Morris Marsh posted this and I thought, NOW OR NEVER LOCA!!!

ANY time I can connect the silly and crazy that we do in class to the real world, I create lasting impressions on my students. I love it when they also have that realization that they can use their Spanish that they’ve acquired through random PQA and Movie Talks, and chats about unicorns to talk about really serious topics. The profound moments that come out of articles like these or discussions about current events will stick with our students forever. I did a picture talk using this slideshow of images that I took from this article online . It moved many of my students to tears. Then we related it back to their family’s experiences with Katrina and used photos of New Orleans pre and post hurricane.

For some of our kids, their exposure to REAL news outside our class is minimal. Our classrooms may be the best, and certainly one of the safest places to hear these stories. How impactful to have these conversations IN the target language, and how incredibly empowering for them.

Every time you do something silly, teach about something that seems far fetched to them, or do a crazy Movie Talk, type the topic into the Google search bar. You never know what you might find! I taught the Wooly song Amnesia the other day and today taught that same class about my mom’s suffering with the real thing. Then students posed questions about dementia and alzheimer’s disease. We spent the class researching (in Spanish) about the differences and similarities between these. It was awesome.

Take the time to have these profound moments with your kiddos, and remember, you can do it while staying in the TL. You’ll be amazed at what they can do! 🙂 YAY for CI! I love it so so so so so much!

Until next time,

HAPPY TEACHING!

Love,

La Maestra Loca