Gran Hotel Monday's - My personal contribution to improving school attendance on Monday'sI know I am late in jumping on the Gran Hotel bandwagon. There have been teachers using it for years in their classrooms. I only started in my AP classes last year, post AP exam. This year I decided to give Gran Hotel a bigger role in my AP classes. Note the top of our class t-shirt (designed and ordered by my students) pictured above. Today is Monday, but we are off from school for President's Day. So, I figured today was the perfect day to share. Monday's are not the most popular day of the week. My 6 year old owns a shirt that says, "OK Monday, Let's Get This Over With". I am not overly energetic on Monday. My students have a difficult time with Monday's, too. I didn't choose Monday without a lot of thought to be Gran Hotel day. It was a purposeful decision. First, let me say a few things for those who are shocked that I would take time out of AP to show a television show. The AP Spanish Language & Culture exam is nothing like the exam I sat for in the mid 1990s. (I realize I just dated myself a bit). There is no grammar section. It is unlike most other AP exams in that there isn't specific content to study. It is about language proficiency. There are six, very broad themes - Public and Personal Identities, Families and Communities, Global Challenges, Science and Technology, Contemporary Life and Beauty and Esthetics (these themes are the same for the current AP Language & Culture exams offered by College Board for other languages). When I first started teaching the AP course at my school during the 2013-2014 school year, I dedicated a day a week (Friday) to grammar review with the grammar book I was given by the previous teacher. By my third year of teaching the course, I moved grammar to Monday's and dedicated Friday's to Book Club (read more about that on my blog here, here and here.) We do interpretive listening practice, and free response tasks in the format of the AP exam Tuesday's, Wednesday's and Thursday's that relate to the AP themes, as well as projects, discussion of current events and watch related films. But, Monday's are regularly scheduled for Gran Hotel. What does Gran Hotel Monday look like? It often starts with kids cheering "Gran Hotel, Gran Hotel" in the hallway on their way to class. I own the entire show on DVD, but it is also back on Netflix. I have my DVD set to start where we last left off. Sometimes we start right away, leaving us time at the end of class for reactions, retelling the story (can you say authentic, meaningful conversation with past tenses?) and often some tweeting. Check out some of our funny posts on Twitter - #GranHotel #APSpanchat and feel free to add to the conversation. Sometimes I screenshot from the segment we are watching ahead of time and put those on a Google Slide deck and we have a brief discussion on predictions (a great way to review the future and conditional tenses, as well as hypotheticals). We usually watch without subtitles, in segments of 25-30 minutes two or three Monday's a month. If you are watching without subtitles, you might want to check out the student guides available on Teachers Pay Teachers created by Mike Peto and Kara Jacobs (check out Kara's blog - it is a wealth of ideas and resources). Another great thing about Gran Hotel is that it can be fairly easily related to the AP themes. Discussing the family dynamic of a wealthy aristocratic family in early 20th century Spain clearly can be tied into the theme of Families and Communities. The role of women at the time goes well with the Public and Personal Identities theme and leads to great discussions and comparisons. That is a great way to work with vocabulary that will come in handy for the cultural comparison task on the AP exam. And, of course, the theme of Beauty and Esthetics can be tied into discussions of fashion and gender roles. The writing of the show itself is also related to this theme. Really, the connections you make are only limited by your creativity. While I believe in limiting direct grammar instruction at the earlier levels, occasionally the AP classes ask for a day of grammar review, so maybe once a month, we do that on the "off Monday". But, I truly see an improvement in fluency and use of advanced grammar structures from the increase in Gran Hotel Monday's and the decrease of 'repaso de gramática' Monday's. I have students who don't want to be absent on Monday. I like to think I am helping overall school attendance on Monday's. My students are engaged with a compelling show, listening to authentic Spanish. And, if you don't teach AP, I recommend you watch the show yourself. I see it as time spent improving my own language skills. The attractive cast doesn't hurt, either. Do you watch Gran Hotel in class? Or just love the show? Share in the comments. Warning - using Gran Hotel in class WILL lead to increased student engagement, better class attendance and language acquisition. I apologize in advance for any cheering students in the hallways of your school!
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The other night, I was at "Juguemos", a game night event run by the Sociedad Honoraria Hispánica at my school. It was such a lovely evening, of low stress fun for students. It didn't hurt that it was the night before the start of a four day weekend. There were a variety of table games, card games and ping pong tables. There was pizza and snacks. And, there was Spanish language music playing. Students were enjoying themselves, not buried in their phones & MacBooks. I am not the advisor for SHH at my school, but I was told that this was an inexpensive and relatively easy event to organize. I highly recommend planning something similar at your school. I brought my own children who are in 6th and 1st grade. We came with Battleship and this game I had picked up at Five Below around the holidays called HASHTAGIT Family Edition. After playing a game of Battleship with my son (he won, though I am fairly sure he cheated), we decided to open up the HASHTAGIT game. It requires someone to be the "judge", along the lines of the game Apples to Apples. The players get five cards with hashtags that they can use to tag the image cards. The judge turns a card over from the picture deck and each player chooses their best option to go along with the image on the picture card. They are generally silly photos and you might have hashtags such as #BFFs, #SaturdayNight or #Happy. Sometimes you don't have one that goes really well with the picture card, but you have to choose from the cards in your hand. Once the players tag the picture, the judge chooses a winner. My children and I started out playing ourselves. I suppose it was our laughter, but within five minutes we had a colleague of mine, a student and a custodian join us. We had so much fun playing together. And everyone from age 6 to over 40 was laughing and enjoying themselves. I then began to imagine how it could be used in the classroom. I was thinking it could work as a quick brain break (check out Annabelle Allen's post on brain breaks on the Fluency Matters CI Peek blog) with a picture or two, dividing the class into teams. It could also work on a game day (game days are great when you are missing one section of the same class like often happens during things like state testing).
And, then it hit me - Picture Talk + HashTagIt. Picture Talk is much like Movie Talk, but with images rather than video. If you are not familiar with either, here is a great post on Picture Talk on the blog T.P.R.S. Q&A and here is a post by Martina Bex on Movie Talk. With novices, you can picture talk an image (providing necessary and vocabulary with comprehensible input) and then have them hashtag it in teams. I would suggest a teacher judge with Novices. In upper levels, you can take it a step further and not only have the students choose a hashtag, but also defend their choice. A student judge can also explain their rationale for choosing a winner. I've created a Google Slide Deck for "El juego de hashtag" with one hundred images. On a Google Doc, I have a bunch of hashtags (I'm open to more ideas for hashtags, so please feel free to share in the comments). I printed the hashtags Doc, laminated each page and cut it into strips so they hold up. Feel free to use these in your classes. The slides can simply be used for Picture Talk if you don't have time to find an image on a given day. My own children helped me pick many of these images, though a few are from Gran Hotel and the new Disney movie Coco. One of the hashtags is #APSpanchat which is a hashtag we use regularly on Twitter in my AP classes (read about that here). Have fun and laugh in Spanish class! I can't wait to try out the game in my classes. T'was the night before NECTFL , and my teacher self might normally be trying to come up with sub plans that would keep my students engaged while I am learning this weekend. Lucky for me, there are some great options out there.
For my new class of Spanish 1's there is the Calendario de Conjugarte from Zambombazo. These drawing activities are the perfect sub plan for novices. They are fun to do and afterwards make great room decor. Not to mention they give students a taste of some terrific art from the Spanish-speaking world. For my intermediates, we are working on the Fluency Matters novel Felipe Alou: Desde los valles a las montañas by Carol Gaab. All of the Fluency Matters novels are so compelling and an excellent source of input. If you purchase the available Teacher's Guide, there are additional readings, activities and questions. Of course, the teacher is an essential part of working with a novel, but when you can't be in class, having the Teacher's Guide allows you to put together sub plans that give your students comprehensible input, even when you aren't able to directly provide it. For my two sections of AP Spanish Language & Culture, the plan was actually the easiest sub plan to create of all. This year, in AP, we have a Friday routine - Book Club. (We have some other routines, too - check out the T-shirt in the pictures in this post. My amazing students designed and ordered a class T-shirt! Expect a future post on our Gran Hotel Monday's - by the way, if you have yet to watch Gran Hotel on Netflix, get on that, ASAP.) I wrote about "Book Club Friday's" last year, but it has evolved a bit from when I first began. Students still read a chapter a week, outside of class in preparation for 'Book Club'. We all read the same book for our first selection - Cajas de cartón by Francisco Jiménez. In class, we would have discussions in small groups, create #BookSnaps (thank you, yet again, Tara Martin for coming up with such a brilliant idea), and record our thoughts on Flipgrid. We were fortunate enough to get in touch with the author and he wrote a lovely email to us. Talk about impressing your students! We finished that book in December. So, I wanted to start reading a new book in January. Last year, we all read the same book again - this time La ciudad de las bestias by Isabel Allende. The students enjoyed that selection as well, but I was looking to take "Book Club" up a notch. Over winter break, I came across the book Marina by Carlos Ruíz Zafón. I thought it could also work for a Book Club selection. As could Senderos fronterizos, the sequel to Cajas de cartón. How could I choose just one? Then, it hit me - I didn't have to. I would let the students choose. In each class, I have different groups reading their choice from the three options. On Friday's, they sit with their group, talking about what they read, creating with language, discussing the nuances of the story, sharing their opinions and predictions. It is beautiful to watch as a teacher. Friday's have become my favorite day of the week in AP and not just because it is almost the weekend. I am not the only one who loves Friday's in AP Spanish. One of my students was disappointed to be missing a Friday in AP Spanish while he went on a field trip! Now, tomorrow is Friday. And I will not be in class. But, Book Club goes on, just as well, when I am not there. It is part of the genius of Book Club. Of course, it is better when I can be there to go around and talk to different groups, but the book club groups pretty much run themselves. Students have autonomy, they have something authentic to talk about and their proficiency, especially with interpretive reading is increasing. Recently, a number of students in my AP classes who have been a part of "Book Club Friday's" since September took ACTFL's AAPPL assessment to earn the Seal of Biliteracy from the state of New Jersey. Guess what they scored on the interpretive reading section. A - as in Advanced. I couldn't be prouder of them. And I can't wait to see their Flipgrid videos tomorrow, in real time, while I am at NECTFL. I will also be connecting with them via Twitter (live). We also use Twitter - a LOT in class. Check out our hashtag #APSpanchat and you can join in the conversation. Do you have routines that work well into creating sub plans? Do you use book clubs in your language classes? Please feel free to share in the comments! |
AuthorHigh school Spanish teacher in NJ. Proficiency-oriented teacher. Always looking to try new things in my classes. Foreign Language Educators of New Jersey 2019 Teacher of the Year. Archives
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