This presentation will show the use of songs in the classroom in order to teach grammar and generate discussion. Songs provide good models of pronunciation, authentic language, topics of interest, and controversy for discussion in the classroom. Songs have topics with which students can identify, so they enjoy participating in the pre-song activities, listening, singing, and post-song discussion. Because of the repetition of verses and the use of rhyme, the meaning and sounds are retained longer, causing the students to learn the target language. Presenter will discuss pre and post-song activities, as well as strategies to adapt songs to different levels of proficiency.
Brittney Rehm and Krisanne Emch (Moorhead High School): Commercials: Lessons Plans and Projects in the Spanish Classroom.
Using authentic materials in the Spanish classroom is very important and creates an enthusiastic learning environment. It is important to produce language for a communicative purpose, as well as being aware of cultural aspects of the language. Our presentations involves the use of authentic Spanish commercials in the Spanish 1 high school classroom. Three different commercial DVD's are used to guide small groups in the creation of a News Cast project done entirely in the Spanish language. We will also include a grading rubric we use for assessing student achievement. We will end by showing an example News Cast project that was presented in Brittney Rehm's Spanish 1 class from last year.
Elena Atitsogbui (Visiting Faculty - Concordia College, Minnesota): Culture, History and Human Values Trough Film Course
In this presentation I will discuss the importance of understanding cultural differences and similarities through the Film Course. Russian History and Culture Through Film is a new course taught as a part of Russian Studies Program at Concordia. While watching various Russian movies I discovered that it is not merely recommended but extremely crucial to give some historical and cultural comments to the movies. It was a great surprise to me that the students requested to watch movies with Russian sound and English subtitles though all the movies had English sound.
I will give some examples when the students misunderstood one of the very important ideas without additional explanation. Some movies were followed by very lively discussions about such concepts as bravery, honesty, generosity. I do believe that this course makes them understand that those concepts are very crucial and we have to think carefully using those words.
Thomas C. Turner (Minnesota State University Morris): Murder and Mayhem...and the Tools to Teach Them.
Serial killers and assassins appear occasionally in Spanish literature. This presentation shows how to "profile" them, in the criminal sense; helpful psychological summaries included for teaching. Example profiled, Dona Adela de Otero, the lady-assassin from Perez-Reverte's El maestro de esgrima.