I was lucky to meet Laurie Clarcq for the first time at TCI Maine in October 2014. She talked about this “embedded reading” idea. It seemed like a great way to increase the comprehensible input. I had only recently started attempting to teach with comprehensible input. I did make an attempt at an embedded reading shortly after that conference, but didn’t feel too confident. When I found out Laurie would be presenting at a school in Massachusetts in the Spring of 2015, I dragged most of my department to learn from her. She talked about the importance of reading in the Foreign Language classroom, and of course, the importance of making it comprehensible. At the TCI Maine conference in October 2015, I saw Laurie for the 3rd time. She is an amazing teacher, and her students are lucky to be able to learn from her. If you haven’t heard about embedded reading, check it out. And if you ever have a chance to learn from Laurie, take advantage of that opportunity!
I usually use the song “La historia de Juan” by Juanes in Spanish 2 to go over the preterite tense, after “teaching” the preterite according to the textbook. This year, I’ve ditched the textbook for my Spanish 2, but still wanted to use the song, and introduce the past tenses. How could I make the song comprehensible to students? A-ha! Embedded Reading! I wasn’t 100% how to create an embedded reading, but I gave it a try. You can see my finished packet here. There are 6 versions of the song, and activities to go with each one.
My plan was to use this reading/song during the short week of Thanksgiving. We have 2 and a half days of school. That means 2 full classes of about 80 minutes, and then a 40 minute class on the half day. I wasn’t sure how long this would take us, but I left the 3 days open for it.
I started with a little background on Juanes. The students watched some commercials with Juanes, and tried to fill in the transcript. Kara Jacobs introduced me to using commercials in class. Here is the activity we did. I didn’t expect them to understand it all, or fill in all of the blanks, it was mainly something to introduce them to Juanes so they could learn a little about him, see him, understand his popularity, etc. Once they knew a little about Juanes, we were ready to begin reading. We spent the 2 1/2 days before Thanksgiving working on the packet, and about 30 minutes of the following Monday.
Overall, I think the kids enjoyed it. They definitely understood the song by the time we got to the reading of the actual lyrics, which I think helped them enjoy the song that much more.
Just found great resources here from Barbara Kuczun Nelson as a follow up activity.
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