Talk about a labor of love.
I have been working on putting together the final touches on my "El Secreto" storytelling unit for Spanish II for literally months. It has taken the back burner to a series of other projects, but I finally sat down tonight, determined to complete it. The unit is designed to target Irregular Preterite verbs (verbs like tener, querer, saber, etc.) that have irregular stems and irregular endings in the preterite tense. It teaches the structures no pudo, trajo, and supo la verdad, but it works in a few others too, like puso and quiso. It's the perfect lead-in to the irregular preterite grammar notes (which are available here) for teachers that prefer to deviate from traditional TPRS®/CI philosophy and sneak in a straight-up grammar lesson every now and then (don't worry, they are at least reading-based notes!).
Anyway, the reason this stinking unit took so long to put together is because I resolved to include a Choose Your Own Adventure story in it. As my former intern, Julia, can attest, I tried and failed miserably (hey, isn't that ironic...quise pero no pude!) to do a CYOA storytelling session with it in class in the Spring of 2013. Ever since then, I have been working on the best way to go about this thing. HALLELUJAH IT IS FINISHED! The CYOA story is a 22 page PPT that has almost 30 (maybe more than 30? I stopped counting at 26, honestly) different versions, depending on the plot choices made by the reader. This reading is in addition to the story script and activities, a non-fiction reading that accompanies the song activity, and a critical thinking reading activity. Reading, reading, reading!
Anyway, if you are interested...you can download the 7-day unit here. If you'd like to see how it fits into my Spanish II curriculum, click here.
Happy reading!
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