Thursday, May 2, 2013

Robo en la noche - chapters 1-3

If you are looking for a Spanish reader for your students that also includes culture of a Spanish-speaking country, you may want to consider Kristy Placido's (@placido) book, "Robo en la noche" which takes place in Costa Rica.

My Spanish 2 students are reading "Robo en la noche", which is the third book for the semester.  We read chapters 1 and 2 last week, and chapter 3 yesterday.  Since there are now 5 main characters that have been introduced in the first three chapters, I wanted to provide a quick activity with the goal to review the characters and their role in the story.  To do this, I listed the five characters and then took sentences directly from the book that gives information about the characters.  Students need to read the sentences and match the character to the description.

As the students were completing the paper in class, I heard some of the students clarifying which woman was the mother and which was the daughter, and discussing the role that Cecilio played in the story.  Because I know this information plays an important part in the rest of the story, I wanted to make sure that the students had this information in order so they could relate it to what happens in the upcoming chapters.

The paper is available HERE.  
Since the lines are taken directly from the book, I asked and received Kristy's permission to make the paper available here. 

14 comments:

  1. Like this! I did something similar recently. We're reading a novel too in French and the last two chapters had lots of dialogue. We made a list of characters involved in conversations, and I asked kids to find two phrases that each character said in these two chapters. The phrases had to be easily attributed to that character. The students wrote them on strips of paper I provided without mentioning the name of the character and left the strips on their desks. They switched places with another pair and had 2 minutes to figure out to which character belong the phrases written by another group. We rotated 3-4 times. I felt that by having the kids find the phrases themselves was a better choice than preparing the activity myself - they were more invested in it and curious to see what other groups came up with.

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    1. I like your idea Natalia. The students had to read the text again to find their sentences, they were engaged when they wrote the sentences and again when they rotated through the other groups' sentences, plus their sentences were grammatically correct because they found them in the book. Win-win situation!!
      I'll have to try this the next time there is a lot of conversation in a book. Was the French book you did this activity with from TPRS Publishing?

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  2. I wanted to look at your paper but I could not open it at school. Do I need some kind of special software? I really want to take a look because I love everything you do :)
    Gracias!!

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    1. Try the link below:
      Robo en la Noche document Ch1-3 review

      The link on the blog post is from the box.net site which may be blocked at your school. Let me know if you still have problems and I'll email the pdf to you.

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  3. Hi- I wanted to look at your paper and I can't open it either. Can you please give me access.

    Thank you,

    Natalia

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    1. Did you try the link in my response above? I tried it before responding here and it was still working. If it doesn't work for you, I can email it to you if you leave your email address.

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  4. Does this come with an Answer Key?

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    1. I don't have one handy to upload, but if the teacher reads the chapter, s/he will be able to create an answer key within a minute or two

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  5. Could you make a quick answer sheet in a google doc?

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    1. Hi Brian
      After considering your request, I decided to not put the answer sheet online since it is something that teachers may use with their students. I want to avoid giving possibly giving the students an excuse to not read and still have the correct answer.

      I am confident that teachers that use Robo en la noche, (good choice because it is a great book!) will not have any problem reading the first 3 chapters and completing the answer key on their own.

      Have a great school year.

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  6. I really love the resources you posted for Robo en la noche. I am having difficulty accessing the files you shared on your blog. The link takes me to "box" and opens the files, but does not allow me to print. Do you have any suggestions?

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    1. Let me know which files you want and your email and I can send the documents to you in that way. :-)

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  7. Hi I was wondering if there is a chapter read aloud at all for Robe en la Noche?

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