![]() I know I've been absent for a while but I have some big, BIG news! I wrote a reader! I love using comprehensible readers in my classroom so I wrote my own! Plus, my husband has been telling me I should be an author for years so I thought I'd give it a try! Turns out, I love it!! Comprehensible readers are magic. They motivate students, help students strengthen their Spanish vocabulary and grammar, enrich their cultural knowledge and build confidence. Magic, I tell you. Reading has a profound impact on language acquisition. However, there is one caveat. You must provide texts that are comprehensible to your students. You can find a number of comprehensible novels online (Wayside Publishing, Amazon, Teacher's Discovery, and TPRS Books. I have a library full of these readers and we use them for Free Voluntary Reading almost daily. Teaching a comprehensible novel as a unit is another ballgame. I don't know about you but I have class sizes of 40+ students. Teaching with a novel can get expensive! You have to provide each student with their own copy of the novel. Yes, you have to. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "I'll just photocopy the book". Well, that's illegal. You legally have to provide each student with their own copy of the novel. Maybe you're luckier than I am but I've never been at a school that had a budget that would allow me to purchase 40+ copies of a novel ($250+ for a class set). I did, however, have some success begging strangers on Twitter with #clearthelist. I'm not going to lie. I would love to write readers to sell on the above mentioned websites. It would pretty much be a dream job for me but for now, I'm writing to help out teachers just like myself who have a very limited budget (and who are probably buying curriculum and other classroom necessities out of their own pocketbook). With my new novel, you can make as many copies as you need for your students AND I included the ancillary activities in the bundle (instead of the usual $20 to $60 additional from the big publishing companies). Let's talk about teaching a novel as a unit before we get into my latest and greatest product. The best part of teaching a novel is that you can do what works for you. I never teach a novel the same way twice. I like to start by preparing my students to read the novel. If the novel is about a a particular country, we will start with a country study. If it's about an animal, we will learn everything we can about the animal before we start reading. Then I'll go chapter by chapter through the novel. There are so many ways you can go through each chapter with your students. I like to begin with introducing any new or difficult vocabulary from the chapter. I use PQA (personalized questions and answers) to practice the new vocabulary and to connect students to the material they are about to read (without them knowing what they will be reading yet). Next, we will read the chapter. Reading looks different for each chapter. My students love Kindergarten reading. I think they really just like to sit on the floor but whatever gets them engaged in the reading, I'm all for! For Kindergarten reading you simply read the book to your students like a Kindergarten teacher would. Use different voices...they love that! Make sure you go slow and ask questions as you read. The character has a dog...great ask your students who has a dog. Ask them to predict what will happen next. Keep it slow, simple and fun. Other days I will have the students read the chapter silently at their desks. I'll wander the room and make sure they are reading and ask questions to those students who I know struggle a bit. Some days who do popcorn reading where one student reads and then randomly stops and chooses someone else to continue reading. This keeps them on their toes! I do a lot of partner reading too. One student reads a paragraph in Spanish. The partner translates it to English and back and forth. Honestly, the possibilities are endless. After reading the chapter, I like to do an extension activity such as a game (Gimkit, Quizlet, Blooket, Running Dictation, etc), worksheet, drawing, acting out the chapter, or even a formative assessment. The activity should reinforce what the student's read in the chapter. Depending on the novel, we read about one chapter per day. If the chapters are short, we may do two. This means a novel is completed within 2-3 weeks. After finishing the novel, I do a project or assessment that shows what the students have learned. You could do a speaking assessment here too but I usually stick to a written project. Let's get back to my new novel. Your students will love it! It will take them to...AFRICA. Yes, I know. Not a Spanish speaking place but I did tie into Equatorial Guinea a bit in Chapter 1 before the main character heads off on a safari! My students love animals so it just made sense to write about all of the animals the character encounters while on a safari in Nairobi, Kenya. It's a fun story that is totally school appropriate (no magic, holidays, etc.) for all students. It's perfect for late Spanish 1 or Spanish 2 students. I even included a glossary with every single word that is in the novel. For me this is super important as I don't want the kids to have any reason at all to go to the internet to look up a word. Nope. That never leads to anything good! So what will you get if you decide to purchase the novel? Of course, you will receive a PDF of the novel. You are free to print as many copies as you need for your students (that alone will save you $$$). Additionally, you will receive an illustrated Google slideshow shortened version of the story to help build suspense! There are also at least 2 documents for each Chapter and pre and post reading activities! For each chapter there is a Google Slideshow that includes the text of the chapter and several additional slides that delve deeper into the topic of that chapter. There is also a PDF printable activity for each chapter. Each of the 18 chapters has a unique activity. There are games, partner activities, writing activities, drawing, etc. I'm super excited by these activities. Also, these are wonderful activities that with just a little tweaking can be adapted to use with other readings! As I mentioned, there are pre and post reading activities as well. I tried to think of everything you'd need! If you purchase and have any ideas on what I can add to improve it, please let me know!! I'm happy to add to the unit too! (e-mail me at [email protected]) If you'd like to take a look, you can find Samuel y su aventura de verano in my TPT store HERE. Happy Reading!! Jen
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