With my current grade 8, we culminated our unit about television with a creative project: to create a new TV program and present it to possible producers!
Before working on the project, we looked at different kind of TV programs in Spain and in South America which lead to different activities and which also provided with a lot of comprehensible input. I put all the resources we worked on on my curriculum wiki: we looked at a game show in Uruguay which was an excellent listening activity with lots of repetition. We also looked at different Spanish series (La Fuga, El Barco ...) which were interesting reading and listening practice. The great thing was that then my students watched the series at home as part of their “a la carte” homework!
After having immersed ourselves in the Hispanic TV culture, I asked the students to work in pairs and to create a new TV program. They had to answer 4 questions on a poster:
- What is it? Series, game show, documentary….
- What is it about? Description, story….
- Who is in it? Actors, celebrities and their role ….
- Why is it going to be successful?
They then had to present it pretending they were selling it to possible producers. They could have notes but they should not be reading the poster. They worked on it over a few lessons and I observed them being engaged, full of ideas and using a lot of Spanish. The day of the presentations, I asked the other students to fill in a table (from Gente Joven textbook) with their feedback on the content, pronunciation, spontaneity and fluency and accuracy of the language. I asked them to spot any errors. I was impressed because they gave productive feedback in Spanish and spotted quite a few errors. I was also pleased with the level of their work. Their posters showed a wide range of vocabulary and complex structures and their presentations were overall of a high standard with good fluency and little hesitation. This is an experience to be repeated as the students got a lot of input and also could use the language in a purposeful way.
