Spanish Level 4- Activities Designed for Online Instruction
🗞 Spanish Level 4, Activity 12: Condiciones del mundo/Current Events (Online)
Description: Students will discuss current events, world, and local news, as well as dangerous weather and climates. In this activity, students will learn to talk about current events and describe an event in Spanish, acting as television news reporters.
Semantic Topics: News, crime, disasters, peace, violence, noticias, crimen, desastres, paz, violencia
Grammatical Structures: Past tense, preterite, imperfect, present perfect, past perfect, el pasado, el pretérito, el imperfecto, el presente perfecto, el pluscuamperfecto
Products: Spanish-language newspapers, governments, and systems in Hispanic countries
Practices: Elections and other governmental processes, how people get their news
Perspectives: What issues or themes are occurring in other parts of the world? How are those issues being addressed?
- Standard 1.1 – Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions.
- Standard 1.2 – Students understand and interpret spoken and written Spanish on a variety of topics.
- Standard 1.3 – Students present information, concepts, and ideas in Spanish to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.
- Standard 2.2 – Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the products and perspectives of (target culture).
- Standard 3.2 – Students acquire information and recognize the distinctive viewpoints that are only available through the (target language) and its cultures.
- Standard 4.2 – Students demonstrate an understanding of the concept of culture through comparisons between (target culture) and their own.
Idaho Content Standards for World Languages:
- COMM 1.1 – Interact and negotiate meaning (spoken, signed, written conversation) to share information, reactions, feelings, and opinions
- COMM 2.1 – Understand, interpret, and analyze what is heard, read, or viewed on a variety of topics.
- COMM 3.1 – Present information, concepts, and ideas to inform, explain, persuade, and narrate on a variety of topics using appropriate media in the target language.
- CLTR 2.2- Describe the connections of products from the target culture with the practices and perspectives of the culture.
- CLTR 2.3- Justify the underlying beliefs or values of the target culture that resulted in the creation of the product.
NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements:
- I can understand a topic involving current events.
- I can talk about weather conditions and dangerous climates.
- I can understand terms about the news.
- I can present on world events.
Materials Needed:
- Google Slide Presentation (hyperlinked)
- Situation Cards (Excerpts from elpaís.com)
- Taboo Cards
Would you like to make changes to the materials?
Access the template(s) below:
- Situation Cards (Canva Template, free account required)
Need help with customizing the templates? View this video for help.
Warm-Up
- Begin by introducing the Can-Dos for today’s activity and opening the Google Slideshow.
Vamos a empezar con los Can-Do statements. - For the warm-up students will be playing a game of fishbowl in small groups. Have students open the linked taboo cards. Before starting the game, review the definitions of the words so that all of the students are on the same page.
Van a jugar un partido se llama “fishbowl.” Voy a poner tarjetas con palabras en un plato. Primero, vamos a repasar las palabras de vocabulario. - To play Fishbowl, start by putting students in two teams. One person will choose a card from the bowl and describe it to their team, once their team guesses it correctly, they will choose a new card to describe and so forth. This continues until one minute has passed. Then, it is the other team’s turn. A different student will describe each round. This will continue until there are no cards left. Whichever team has guessed the most total cards wins.
Vamos a dividinos en parejas. Van a describir las tarjetas por un minuto, y su equipo necesita adivinar tantas tarjetas como sea posible en un minuto. Después, el otro equipo va a tomar un minuto para adivinar las tarjetas. Continuan hasta que todas las tarjetas hayan sido adivinadas. El equipo con la mayor cantidad de tarjetas gana.
Main Activity
- For the main activity, students will scan the QR code or open the link to receive a card with a situation (some kind of current event) on it, they will discuss the event with a partner in breakout rooms.
Para la actividad principal, los estudiantes van a recibir una carta con una situación real del mundo. Van a hablar sobre el evento con su pareja y presentarlo al grupo como si fueran reporteros. Recuerda a los estudiantes que la idea no es un informe perfecto, pero practicar y aprender nuevo vocabulario.
2. When the students return, Students will present the event to the rest of the group as if they are news reporters. Remind students the idea isn’t to have a perfect report but to have fun practicing new vocabulary through real-life examples.
Wrap-Up
1. Have students share new words that they learned or looked up throughout the activity
- ¿Qué nuevas palabras aprendieron? (What new words did you learn?)
- ¿Dónde te gusta leer o ver las noticias? (Where do you like to read or watch the news?)
- ¿Prefieres leer o ver las noticias? ¿Por qué? (Do you prefer to read or watch the news? Why?)
End of Lab
- Read Can-Do statements once more and have students evaluate
their confidence.
(Use thumbs up/thumbs down or download our student cards.) - Encourage students to be honest in their self-evaluation.
- Pay attention, and try to use feedback for future labs!
NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements:
- I can understand a topic involving current events.
- I can talk about weather conditions and dangerous climates.
- I can understand terms about the news.
- I can present on world events.
CULTURAL NOTES:
- Noticias y periódicos hispanos:
- El País
- El Tiempo
- Latin American Network Information Center – Un sitio donde puede encontrar noticias de países y ciudades latinoamericanos.
How to Revise or Remix a Pathways Project Activity
Feeling creative? The Pathways Project needs your help in revising and remixing activities for the K-16 language classroom.
Try taking an activity to the next level by:
- Add new content (something you’ve created or another OER source)
- Contribute additional activity suggestions
- Integrate authentic materials such as videos, infographics, photos, etc.
- Suggest how to implement the activity in the classroom
- Customize the content for a specific audience or group of learners (for example, K-5 learners or to differentiate for student’s needs)
