Robo en la noche - capítulo 4

Completed activity mentioned in #4-6 below.

My Spanish 2 students are currently reading Robo en la noche, a book written by Kristy Placido.  I've read this book before with my level 2 students, but this time I noticed that the students were struggling a bit, (a problem that I take the blame for due to the way I introduced the first two chapters - see the end of the post for more details).  

In order to give the students more exposure to the setting and the characters, I made an activity to complete after reading chapter 4.  Below is a brief detail of my plans for chapter 4.

1. Before reading chapter 4, review the characters in chapters 1-3 by completing and/or talking about the information the graphic organizer (found HERE).
2. Students copy a list on the board (see below) in order to read with a purpose (to find the listed information in chapter 4 as we are reading it together):
    A. 2 lugares donde ocurre la acción en el capítulo
    B. 4 hechos/información sobre Cecilio
    C. 2 hechos sobre las aves
    D. 2 hechos sobre Costa Rica
    E. 2 dichos (sayings and/or slang) en Costa Rica
As I read the chapter, students raised their hand when they found information listed in A,B,C,D or E and then they all wrote the information in their composition books.
3.  PQA and discussion of different parts of the chapter
4.  After completing the chapter I distributed page 1 and 2 on the file attached below.  Students had to cut out the squares and put the events in the correct order.  I checked them before they glued them to sheet #1.

 
5. Give students the 3rd sheet, printed on a different color.  They cut the squares with the sentence dialogues and matched them to the 11 different events in the chapter.  Note: The exact dialogue on the small squares is NOT taken from the book.  Students had to read the sentences and decide which person may have said that.  They glued these to the paper after I checked them.
6. Finally, on the small squares with the sentence dialogues, they needed to write the name of the person that would have said the statement.
7. As students finished the  activity, they decided when they were ready to take a comprehension quiz on the chapter.  It was a 10 point multiple choice quiz which I graded with my new app Quick Key.  (22 quizzes graded in less than a minute - not too shabby).

I'm not a big advocate of taking class time to do a cut and paste activity, but when students order events, it's helpful to be able to physically move the events around to order them.

A huge plus with this activity today was when I arrived at school and realized it was the first day of Keystone testing.  My first class was scheduled to be in my classroom for 2 hours.  Cutting and pasting helped to break up the long class period and allowed the students to work at their own pace.

The main reason why students may be having more difficulty with the book this time is that I was went to ACTFL in Orlando and in an attempt to leave behind lesson plans that were productive...I had the students read the first two chapters with the substitute.  Now I know not to do that in a level 2 or below class.  They definitely need the guidance when reading, especially for the first few chapters of the book.