If you haven’t already, now is a great time to use MovieTalk with the music video “A las tres” by los Enanitos.

I made a reusable set of the “¿Quién lo dijo o lo hizo?” cards from the Teacher’s Guide, along with a set of character names for each set of cards. Students completed the activities in groups of two or three students; then, we reviewed the activity.

We discussed the before-reading discussion questions from the Teacher’s Guide.

I read the chapter aloud to the students, circling, personalizing, and clarifying when needed.

Students re-read the chapter individually and completed this story map.

We reviewed the story map together.

Students worked in groups of 3-4 to complete the Gallery Walk activity. They first wrote their list of five events individually, then used the Team Windows structure to choose the top five events for their group before putting them on a poster for the Gallery Walk.



I received express, written consent from the publisher to share the materials that I created and to use the cover image and title of the novel in this blog post. I am not compensated in any way by the author or publisher for writing this post.


More on teaching Esperanza:

  1. Esperanza, Chapter 1 (Day 1 and Day 2)
  2. Esperanza, Chapter 2
  3. Esperanza, Chapter 3
  4. Esperanza, Chapters 4-6
  5. Esperanza, Chapter 7
  6. Esperanza, Chapter 8
  7. Esperanza, Chapter 9
  8. Esperanza, Chapter 10

Esperanza around the web

Using novels in class:

5 replies on “Esperanza Chapter 7

  1. Great story map! Your posts always inspire me to figure out how I can move slower so that my students get more out of the readings.

    1. We finished the novel this week and did some reflecting, and my students said that what they enjoyed least was whenever they had to do a worksheet. I’m torn, however, because I noticed that the time that they spent with the worksheets was the most beneficial because they were able to work through the chapter at their own pace and I could coach them through the pieces that they didn’t understand. What to do, what to do?!

  2. About how much time do you spend on each chapter? I hate to spend 10 weeks on a novel, but it seems like going through more than one chapter a week is too fast for the students, and they don’t understand it as well.

  3. You know, I ended up spending 10 weeks on the novel and it WAS too long. I needed to do a little more pre-instruction of vocabulary so that I did not draw it out for so long. I think that doing three chapters every two weeks would be an okay pace for students–so finishing in 7 weeks or so?? That’s what I will aim for next time.

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