La Dentista script from Sr. Wooly's song

Who doesn't love the wonderful Sr. Wooly and his creative videos and ever-increasing teacher materials?  I'm positive if I had my students list their top five activities of the semester, Sr. Wooly's videos would, without fail, be top contenders.  

In 2013, I added Sr. Wooly's La Dentista video as part of our (official) curriclum for Spanish 2.  Before any of the activities below, the students and I read a children's book about going to the dentist, (Max va al dentista), read a story on A-Z reading about a vampire that goes to the dentist, complete the MovieTalk of La Dentista y el Vampiro and related activities (click HERE for those activities), create class stories using high frequency words and structures, and complete several other components in this "unit" of the curriculum. 

To prepare my students for the vocabulary in the video La Dentista, we do the following activities:

1) An activity with the phrases:  Creo que sí and Creo que no/no creo que.  Students wrote 1 sentence about themselves that was true (verdadero) and 1  that was not true but could be possible.  I read one of their sentences to the class and their classmates said Creo que sí if they thought the sentence was true, or no creo que sí, or creo que no if they didn't think it was true.

2) To pre-teach the structure, se quejó de, I created a TPRS storyline. Students contribute the following information about a fictitious character:
 - name
 - lived with mother, father, or both
 - number of siblings
 - class in school 
 - sport person played
 - instrument the person played  

Then I use the students' suggestions in a story about someone that complained throughout the day about each of the above items.  After our class story, students read a story, from a previous school year, about "Dante". 

3) I turn the volume off when we watch La Dentista the first time and I narrate the action and descriptions using vocabulary that the students know and introduce a few others. During this narration I also ask questions throughout to check for students' comprehension.  

The second time we watch the video with sound and subtitles.  We may watch it a few more times, and I pause it to ask students to describe what is happening.  The last time we watch is with the grammar pop-ups.

*4) I distribute the story script for La Dentista and I read it to the students. 

Partial script for La Dentista

When I read a word they are not sure about, they tap their foot on the floor and I translate the word to English and continue with the reading in Spanish. 

Sometimes I assign the script for homework.  Students have to read the story to their parent in English.  The purpose is for students to read the story again in the evening and if they're reading and don't know a word, I tell them to circle it and tell me the next day so I know which words are causing problems.

  Recently, Carrie Toth (@senoraCMT) posted materials on her blog (HERE) that she uses with La Dentista.  Her materials have a powerpoint with screenshots of Sr. Wooly's video and text.  I'll add that to my materials to provide more repetitions of high frequency structures. (Plus check out her materials on Billy la Bufanda, and Runaway on the same blog post!)

Because Sr. Wooly's videos easily captivate the students' attention, we use many of the videos as part of our curriculum and others for a brain break or end of class video if there are a few minutes remaining.

If you have heard about his videos but haven't subscribed yet, I strongly recommend that you do so now.  Plus, according to his recent email to current subscribers, his new and improved site will be revealed within weeks. 

*Since Carrie has a transcript available for the La Dentista story, I did not link my version on this post.  If you would like a copy of my transcript, indicate that in the comment section below (and also indicate if you prefer not to have your comment with your email published and I will send you the document without posting your comment) or contact me on twitter @sonrisadelcampo and I can send the document to you as a link from Google Drive.