Teresa/Cecilia/Marta stories & QuickTime

It has been a few weeks since I uploaded some of the longer stories that I have used with my Spanish 1 students. I wrote the stories because I wanted to teach the following vocabulary words: se queda, oye, la canción, la muerte. Those are the words that are in episode 8 of Cuentos de Ensalada, which I taught today. The shortest story, about Marta, is how I introduced the vocabulary. The students and I created a story similar to this in class and after sketching it and retelling it, I gave them my version to read.


Class Activities for "Los Problemas de Cecilia en la Biblioteca":
1. I used QuickTime to made audio recordings of the story about Cecilia and Teresa.
2. In class, the students listened to the Cecilia recording. For each paragraph, students had to write down 1 or 2 things in English about what happened in that paragraph. I stopped the recording after each paragraph and then replayed that paragraph. Then they shared what they wrote down with the class.
3. I projected the script for the Cecilia story on the screen and we read it together.
4. I distributed the script for the Cecilia story and they read it to their partners.
5. Students wrote 2 questions about what happened in the story: 1 question in Spanish and 1 question in English. Then I divided the students in 3 groups and used THEIR questions to more repetitions of the vocabulary and script. If the question I asked was in Spanish, they had to answer in Spanish. If it was written in English, they had to answer in English.

Class Activities for "Teresa se queda en el armario":
1. I made a QuickTime audio recording of this story also.
2. Students listened to the entire recording, without pauses.
3. I distributed a worksheet with 25 questions about the story. Students worked with a partner or in small groups to read the questions to make sure they understood them. If they knew any of the answers from hearing the story the first time, they could write the answers on the sheet.
4. Then I played the recording, stopping it after each sentence or after at least of the questions was addressed. Students wrote the answers in English.
5. Then I distributed the reading and students could look at the written script to find any answers they might have missed by only listening.
6. They read the story to each other in English.
7. I gave the students 10 minutes to write an ending of the story.

They had quite a lot of comprehensible input and repetitions with the vocabulary so I felt confident that they were ready for Episode 8 of Cuentos de Ensalada and would be able to understand the majority of the narration and conversations between the characters.

Here is the short quiz I gave to the students after the listening exercises and my presentation of Episode 8.