This lesson and unit serves primarily as a grammar instruction unit. However, in order to avoid explicit grammar instruction and to make more meaningful use of our time, I adapted this unit from Carrie Toth’s activities that I found on her blog, SomewheretoShare.com. This unit has been very successful in the last two years that I have taught it. Instead of pushing grammar with grammar notes and review activities, students direct their learning towards creating meaning with their past-tense words and narrate this story. Being able to narrate a story in the past tense is a presentational writing and speaking goal for Intermediate level students, and this unit helps students work towards those goals. I also supplement this unit with a song and digital activities from Señor Wooly’s website called “El Banco”. The vocabulary in his song unit is similar to this video story, and students are able to connect the vocabulary between the two. In the first year teaching this unit, I did not spend enough time on the vocabulary at the beginning of the unit and students were unable to produce the vocabulary as I had hoped they would. I also did not supplement the unit with the Señor Wooly activities. The second year we spent more time reviewing the video clip, practicing the vocabulary in full context of the video clip, and added the Señor Wooly supplemental activities. With the addition of the digital activities as well as the additional time spent reviewing the vocabulary and content, students were far more engaged and successful the second time around. In the future, I would like to change the order of events and complete the Señor Wooly activities prior to the Movie Talk unit. It is my hope that this will give students a more solid foundation of the vocabulary and increase their language production and comprehension.
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