El Escape Cubano, Chaper 6-11

This is the 3rd of 3 posts with explanations of the activities than can be used when reading Mira Canion's novel, El Escape Cubano. You can find the previous blog posts by clicking on the following links: 

- Preparing to Read a Novel
- El Escape Cubano, chapters 1-5

El Escape Cubano - Chapter 6
The title of chapter 6 is "Llueve", so it's the perfect time to sing about the rain.  I use the song, "La lluvia" by Los Pompillos.  I distribute the lyrics to the song. There are 4 stanzas in the song and each stanza has 4 lines. Then I divide the class into 4 sections. Each section sings one line of each stanza.  Group 1 sings the first line in all the stanzas; group 2 sings the second line in all the stanzas; etc. 
At the end, the lyrics are "la lluvia bendita" (2x). For this groups 1 and 2 sing "la lluvia" and groups 3 and 4 sing "bendita". Everybody sings the last two words "la lluvia".

We practice before we sing by me reading a line and the group repeating. This is one of the rare times in my class that I ask students to repeat after me. The song is fast paced and I know that there is no way they will be able to sing some of the lines in unison with the members of their group and the video, but it's fun and a nice brain break. Try it! 

In chapter 6, the characters dance to the song Guantamera, which you can also play for the students beforehand. I had planned to play this song as students entered the class for several days leading up to chapter 6, but I forgot to do this. 

El Escape Cubano - Chapter 7

Acting a scene from chapter 7

Miguel and his dad and friends encounter a shark in chapter 7. It is another chapter that works well with reader's theater.  The first time I read this with my students, there was a student in my class that received in the mail a shark costume that she was going to wear for Halloween. She asked me if she could bring in the shark suit! Obviously, I said YES!! 

(The second time I read the novel with a different group of students, I used a felt board instead of acting. See Chapter 9 for a photo.)

How much do your students know about sharks? This is a good opportunity for your students to learn about sharks in the target language. I do not have this completed yet, but it is my goal to add a comprehensible reading on Tiburones before next fall when I read this novel again with my students. First I'll make a Kahoot with several questions about sharks and then follow up with the reading.
 
In the meantime, here are two links to websites for children that students can find information about sharks.

-       http://rincondelecturas.com/lecturas/60025-tiburones/60025-tiburones.php

-       http://algarabianinos.com/explora/los-tiburones/

The second link also has easy to follow directions on how to sketch a shark.

For those that have an A-Z Reading account, there is a book on Tiburones.

El Escape Cubano - Chapter 8
After reading this chapter, students chose their partner for the next activity (or groups of 3 depending on the size of your class). I also asked for a volunteer to sketch sentences from the chapter. Each group had a small marker board, a marker, and an eraser.  I showed a sentence to the artist and she sketched it on the board. The students looked for the sentence in chapter 8 and wrote it down. I gave students a minute or so and then told them to lift up their marker boards. Groups with the correct sentence earned one point.

The document with the sentences and instructions can be found HERE.   
The student that was my artist was very talented, so I took a photo of her sketches and uploaded them to a powerpoint. The following day I projected the sketches on the powerpoint to review chapter 8. If you don't have a student that wants to be an artist, you could use the powerpoint instead of having a student artist. Click HERE for the powerpoint. 

El Escape Cubano - Chapter 9
I used to use a felt board in Spanish class on a regular basis when I was teaching the story "Cuentos de Ensalada". To mix it up a little, I cut some felt into some (very simple) shapes: the characters, (I wrote their names on the shapes to help identify them), a shark, the sun, the raft, tire innertubes, and water.  As I read the chapter, a student volunteer moved the pieces of felt to correlate with what I was reading. 

El Escape Cubano - Chapters 10 & 11
Students read the chapters on their own and wrote a short summary in English.

There you have it. 
The only thing I didn't include was the final assessment. Please understand, the reason I gave the assessment was because I was confident that the students understood the storyline and the vocabulary, so I took that opportunity to let them show their comprehension and ability to respond to questions about the plot and characters. As expected, the results of the assessment were impressive, showing the students how successful they had been in reading the novel.