Cross Curricular Connection

In the fall, my seventh grade students read a book called "A Long Walk to Water" by Linda Sue Park.  It follows two storylines, one about a young girl who has to walk a long way for water for her family daily, and the other about a young man named Salva Dut.  Salva was a lost boy in Sudan and had to walk many many miles in order to find salvation from a war torn country.
Here is a blurb from Linda Sue Park's website-

The students really enjoyed the book, and were able to skype with the author.  They did some fundraising as well, to support Salva Dut's efforts to bring clean water to South Sudan.  The students connected with the story, and Salva Dut.  They were excited to watch a live streaming video where the author, Linda Sue Park, and Salva Dut answered questions that children across the country had sent in.

Now here is where Spanish class comes in.  Remember, this is their first year of Spanish, and we meet every other day.  So in reality, the students had only had about fifty days of Spanish class at the point where the following story was written.  I shared the following with the English teachers to explain:

The students in my White A block wrote this together. We sat in a circle, and each person had a paper, they wrote for a minute, then passed the paper.  They had to read, and then continue the story started by the previous student.  We did this for about 10-12 rounds, so the following story is a combination of many student writers.  I’ve included the English translation for you to see, and I cleaned up the spelling a little in the Spanish version. I was so impressed by the students retelling Salva’s story in Spanish!  After reading this to them, I shared some irony with them- in Spanish, the word “salva” means “he saves”.  The kids love that, since Salva is now saving lives with his iron giraffes.

Hay un muchacho.  Muchacho se llama Salva.  Salva está furioso.  Salva no agua.  Salva está muy triste porque no tiene agua.  Salva quiere agua.  Salva vive en Africa.  Salva está triste, Salva quiere un taco.  Salva no tiene un taco.  Salva no come.  Salva quiere agua, no quiere taco.  Salva muy triste.  Entonces, Salva no vive.  Un ratón come Salva.  Ahora, un ratón está feliz, y Salva no vive.  Un ratón corre muy rápido, está feliz.

There is a boy.  The boy is called Salva.  Salva is furious.  Salva no water.  Salva is very sad because he has no water.  Salva wants water.  Salva lives in Africa.  Salva is sad, Salva wants a taco.  Salva doesn’t have a taco.  Salva doesn’t eat.  Salva wants water, he doesn’t want a taco.  Salva very sad.  Then, Salva doesn’t live.  A mouse eats Salva.  Now, a mouse is happy, and Salva doesn’t live.  A mouse runs very fast, he is happy.

Yes, it takes an odd turn at the end, but overall I was so impressed with their ability to make a connection to what they have been studying in other classes, and bring it into our classroom. You can even see that a student tried to bring it back to Salva's story by saying, "..quiere agua, no quiere un taco." You can see the original writing here:

I truly believe that teaching through Comprehensible Input, and Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling gave my students the ability and confidence to write that story. In the past, when I strictly followed a textbook, focusing on grammar and verb charts, my students never would have been able to write such complete thoughts and formulate them into sentences this early in their Spanish learning process..

I'm so excited to continue on my journey of improving my teaching through TCI and TPRS.