I was fortunate to happen across The Landscape Song over at Zambombazo recently and I was super impressed with the music and especially the inspiration behind it. (I should point out that The Landscape Song is a Jeep commercial, but the commercial part of it is very brief and doesn't interfere much with the music and the beautiful landscapes that inspired it.)
Zach and Betsy over at Zambombazo do an amazing job of creating unique and inspiring activities and I have used their work many times in my classes. (If you haven't been to their site yet, go now!) Usually they put up great activities when they discover songs that can be used in the classroom. But I guess they had their hands full so they did not link an activity to The Landscape Song. That gave me an opportunity to step up and create my own activity to share with my students (and with yours!).
The great thing about this is that the idea is universal. Students from Spanish 1 all the way through Spanish 5/AP were able to watch this video, hear the music, and find inspiration. And it was a PERFECT activity for the first day of class, if I do say so myself!
The activity includes, music, map skills, geography, and Spanish (of course). There are two versions of the activity because my Spanish 1 classes were on the first day of Spanish ever and I couldn't write directions or questions for them in Spanish yet. (Well . . . I did sneak a little Spanish in there - all cognates though.)
Of all the lessons I have ever done on the first day of class, I have to say that this one is my very favorite. The students seemed to enjoy it too. My band students were fascinated and we reviewed the geography of the Spanish-speaking world in a completely painless way. Win, win, win!
Feel free to use it in your class too - on the first day or otherwise. I will offer this one small caution to you. The place names appear in teeny-tiny print at the bottom of each picture, so I had to call them out as we went so that my students could complete the activity.
Do you love it, or what? It would be great to hear from you.
All the best,
--AnneK
8 comments :
I love this! I will be using it at some point during the first week. Thank you so much for sharing!
~Robyn
Gracias ProfeSpain8. I hope your students enjoy it as much as mine did. For extra credit on their quiz yesterday I asked them to name a country that crosses the Andes Mountain Range and most of them were able to do it. They were actually paying attention. :-) Hooray! --AnneK
This looks wonderful. I definitely plan on using it. Did you show it on a projector or in a computer lab?
Hi, Anne!
Thank you for the time that it takes to encourage other Spanish teachers like you do -
Are the two activities with the Landscape song available for purchase?
Courtney S.
Hola Courtney, Thanks so much for your words of encouragement. It is great to hear from other teachers out there in the world. The two lessons that I made to go along with Canción del Paisaje are free. Just click on the image to download the one you want - or download them both, if you like. I do have some items for sale over at Teachers Pay Teachers (by Anne Karakash) if you want to find something there but, whenever possible, I try to put up freebies and ideas over here. Money is important, of course, but friendship, camaraderie, sharing, and community are also important to me. I hope your students enjoy the activity! --AnneK
Bless your heart for sharing! This will be a great addition to the early weeks while we're learning routines. Clever, quietly academic =)
Gracias, Kristen. I hope this goes well in your early weeks and that routines are quickly established. Quietly academic? Yes, I like your turn of phrase. :-) --AnneK
Christine, I swear I responded to your comment earlier but it doesn't seem to be showing up here now. Please accept my apologies. My school has 1:1 iPads - which would be awesome for this activity. But, since it was the first day of class, no one had been issued their iPads yet. So I showed it on a projector with a good set of speakers attached. It worked just great, but I think you could use it in the computer lab too - as long as the students had headphones. :-) --AnneK
Post a Comment