One never knows what may happen during a story in Spanish class. In our first story of the year, we ended up with a blue cat dancing in Greenland because there was no music anywhere else. We use common words and phrases to create and tell the stories, and those few words and phrases (or structures) are the building blocks that lead to increased proficiency.
For our first story this year, the structures we focused on included: “puede" (can), "tiene" (has), and “quiere" (wants). The list of words and phrases are the bare bones of a story, and students guide the story by filling in all the details with their own ideas. These stories become the script we use to practice and ultimately record a green-screen video of the students acting out the story.
Above is a screenshot of our blue cat (played by Robina), who’s in Africa asking an elephant (played by Jada) if there is (“hay” - another one of our structures) any music there. (Pero no, la jirafa dice que (says that) no hay música en África.)
In addition to creating stories and videos, we will be reading novels, independently writing stories, playing games, watching short videos (made by others), and acquiring Spanish through a wide variety of other activities. Who knows what will happen next?
In this picture, an elephant named Francisco (played by Ryan) is telling Robina that there is (yay!) music in Greenland.