A Useful Podcast

Todos con Haití

This podcast is related to the past earthquake in Haiti.  It talks about the Latina singer Shakira and her efforts of helping reconstruct the nation.  She created a foundation that helps children by providing schooling, health care, food, and more. It is basically a 2:30 minute audio podcast that gives a basic news report about Shakira’s foundation.  I really liked this podcast because the native speaker talks slowly and clearly.  This is the kind of podcast I would use in an Intermediate Spanish class as a listening comprehension activity (for homework). Students would be able to listen to the podcast as many times as they wanted and then answer given comprehension questions about the information contained within the news report.  It brings current events into L2 classroom discussion as well as practices listening comprehension!

Using Bubblr in Teaching

My First Bubblr Story - "La Ciudad de Barcelona"

There are various ways for me to use Bubblr (using Flickr photographs) as a teacher and even more ways for my students to use this tool that will promote engagement in second language learning.

The story I created with Bubblr is about the city of Barcelona in Spain. All photographs used depicted real places in the city.  Each page showed a different scene of the city and the text explains what the place is/the name of the place/what you might find there.  I could use stories like this in my future classroom in order to show students what different Spanish speaking places look like and how they compare to where they live/cities in the United States.  An objective for a lesson/activity involving this might be:

·         Students will be able to compare and contrast the city of Barcelona to the city of Buffalo. 

I could also use a story like this one to practice/introduce/review vocabulary for PLACES.  As we read the story out loud in class, I could highlight the places vocabulary and have students repeat the words after me and define them in English (for review).  To extend the lesson, and depending on the grade level, I could ask students to tell me what things they might find in each of the places stated throughout the story.  Objectives for an activity like this would be:

·         Students will be able to identify and orally state review places vocabulary.

·         Students will be able to recognize places depicted in pictures and orally state what items you can find in that particular place (in Spanish).

Students could also create their own stories like these after doing research about a Spanish speaking country/city and present them to the class.  Other Bubblr story topics that students create might be based on a vocabulary or grammar theme.  Objectives for these story creations might be:

·         Students will write a short story correctly in a specified tense.

·         Students will write a short story correctly including specified vocabulary words.

·         Students will write a short story which includes the word/phrase (ex: “hay”) at least 5 times.

Sharing Bubblr stories in class in front of an audience will also motivate students to show their best work and encourage student ownership of their work!