Guerrero, Una Vida, Muchas Batallas (Warrior, One Life Many Battles) is a short film covering the life of Manuel Guerrero Ceballos and his son also called Manuel (Guerrero Antequera). Manuel Guerrero was the head of the Teacher’s Union in Chile under Pinochet. Along with two others, Manuel Guerrero was murdered in what became known as Caso Degollados (Slit-throat Case). Stories like these are powerful and I wanted to use the film trailer so my students could see the impact of dictatorship at a family level. I could probably develop this further, but for the moment I have made two translation tasks which can be downloaded below.
WORKSHEET: El Caso Degollados TRANSLATION INTO SPANISH + ENGLISH
I have been putting things together so that I can do revision of topics that were covered during lockdown – I will want to pop back to some of them as we move through the first term. One part of this is a resource based on an interview with the Venezuelan trans producer ARCA. I have also taken the opportunity to take a look at suffixes in Spanish. When you see the resources you will see how I have shoehorned that in!
The idea of using the video for the song SOY YO by Bomba Estéro has been commented on by other people with blogs sharing resources. I used it with my Year 7 to add a bit of variety to our lessons and to give them some cultural input. We watched the video first WITHOUT the sound and we tried to describe what was happening. This was obviously very much led by me and they were agreeing or not with what I was saying (thumbs up / down). They had been introduced to the verb SER already, so we were trying to describe the personality of people we saw. We then looked at the written description and picked that apart before watching the video again. With older students you might then take a look at the lyrics, but this would have been a step too far for my lot.
I have made another post on the TES resources site in order to keep my blog going. The resources focus on colonialism and its impact. I could not upload the PowerPoint as it was too large – I guess this is why I have almost run out of space on this blog (!) – so I had to upload it as a pdf. Not ideal, but …
I am almost out of space on this blog, so while I save up for the upgrade, I’m posting on the TES website. On the link below you will find a reading resource for A level Spanish in the topic area of Jóvenes de hoy – ciudadanos del mañana. It focuses on a Spanish street artist (Pejac) and how this art form can be used as a means of social protest.
As I explained in a post a week or two ago, we are trying to prepare our Year 11 students for their A level studies from September. We are putting together transition packs, but are doing this in two phases. Attached is the work I have created for phase 2. I really want to get the balance right between engaging them to do some work and pushing them beyond GCSE while at the same time not putting anyone off taking the subject! Not sure whether I’ve managed it here, but you can adapt it yourselves to your own context. Students work through the three tasks independently.
Although translation can easily be embedded into teaching, I find that it is important to take a period of time to focus on the skills involved. Attached is a booklet I have put together which is made up of all of the AQA translations into English from recent past papers. I find that pulling everything together from a certain task type helps to focus the students on the skills needed and also helps me as a teacher to spot trends.
Another update to my resources on the Spanish A level topic of Franco y su dictadura, but somewhat left of field. I was watching a BBC documentary in which they mentioned that there was some controversy when Spain participated in and won the Eurovision Song Contest 1968. It was alleged that the contest was rigged by “el Caudillo”, who sent state television officials across Europe offering cash and promising to buy television series and contract unknown artists in other participating countries in return for their votes. The UK came second by one vote that year. Whether or not this is true, it is an interesting stories and it lends itself pretty well to an A level summary task which is posted below.
Unless I am reading this wrong, in the AQA Spanish A level exam the gap fill exercises seem to focus on literary texts. Gap fill activities always seem to have traps in them and they do like to use an expression or two. Getting the students to focus on the types of words listed is key + then to work out the possibilities. If one of the possible answers is an adjective does the gap require masculine, feminine, etc? If a verb is needed which tense etc? I try to get my students to do this before filling the gaps telling them that there are always more words than gaps and the extra words might be trying to catch them out.
Spanish Teaching Resources and Ideas 