Simple Novels in Spanish

From the folks at TPR world:

Mini-novels for year I Spanish, French, or German students! These are in dialogue and narrative format, and include @300 level I vocab words in a story format. There are eight mini-novels in the series.

I would like to take a brief break from the text book in my Spanish I classes and just read this little novel together. With our limited twenty-week time frame in co-op, I am not sure if that would work, but I could assign this with my home class.

I could also have the kids to read over the summer if they hope to take Spanish II this fall. This would help keep their skills fresh. There are a few web pages dedicated to helping with lessons and vocab for some of these novels! I'll share a few that go along with the first mini-novel.

This first book is about a 15 yo girl, Ana, who is from a poor family. She has friends who are rich (by the world's standards) and she finds herself jealous of them. Ana's Spanish teacher tells her about a program the school has to help a student from their school to go to Mexico to live for the summer, so she asks her father if she can go. Since the school provides for it, her family wouldn't have to pay the expenses, so her father says she can go. She lives with a family in a small city who happen to be poorer than her family, so her view of life changes radically. When she returns home to California, she is able to see everything in a different light.

The second book is about a girl, Patricia, who comes to California as an exchange student from Guatemala.

Since vocabulary is presented in context of a story, level I students will be pleasantly surprised by how much they already know, but also how much they are able to pick up and understand the target language in context.

The first activity web site is here and is in Spanish. If I hear (from my Spanish teachers' list) of any in other languages, I will post them here. There are worksheets here, and they are not necessarily in line with Charlotte Mason principles. For that, you would want to present the unknown vocabulary word definitions ahead of time, and ask leading questions in Spanish, so that the students will answer (in simple narrations) in the target language. For example I might begin with, "Dime sobre los padres de Ana. ¿Son simpáticos o estrictos?"

My next post will have some stories/books written by native speakers that are popular with kids in the Spanish speaking world (say primary to middle school age).


Enjoy!

Señora Javamom

Literatura en español and other links

My apologies to those subscribed to my updates...I kept trying to move this to the top of my blog, but I was confusing my browser pages. Ack!!
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Literatura en español for different ages and capability levels:

Little Red Riding Hood - Caperucita Roja

Goldilocks and The Three Bears - Ricitos de Oro y Los Tres Osos. There are multiple versions out there, but I like this one for it's simplicity. The illustrations also match the story.

Last weekend I found Kipling's Just So Stories en español as well as Three poems by Edgar Allen Poe en español, including "Eldorado"


Next, I looked up free e-texts of a famous Spanish Play called La Vida es Sueño by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. For synopsis, theme, discussion, etc. go here. I remember studying lines from this in Spanish IV in preparation for state competition over 25 years ago! My events were: Poetry recitation, sight reading, and a dramatic interpretation from this play.
There is the famous soliloquy by the character Segismundo at the end which ranks up there with Hamlet's.

In English it is:

What is life? A frenzy.

What is life? An illusion,

A shadow, a fiction,

And the greatest profit is small;

For all of life is a dream,

And dreams are nothing but dreams.

This first link is the first version of the play. There is another version available here. The text is also available in inglés.

Lastly for today, I'm including a different link for hymns en español than what I've used in the past (cyberhymnal.com).


Himnarios en español / inglés. The Doxology is available at this link, as well!


Enjoy!

I am :-)

Señora Javamom