Connections
Connect with Other Disciplines and Acquire Information

“Standard 3.1: Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language”

The 5 C’s of learning a Foreign Language consist of Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities.

We previously talked about how our students connected new Spanish vocabulary words with the stems they were studying in their Language Art classes.

I thought of this next idea as I was prepping to use a song during our food unit. This Jesse y Joy (cloze activity) song, “Una en un millón,” features the following lyrics:

eres la crema en mi café
la cereza del pastel
el agua de mi té

That got me thinking to what other metaphors could the students could come up with on their own. Some examples my students came up with:

eres la leche con mi galleta
eres la leche en mi cereal
eres la mantequilla de mi pan
eres los frijoles con mi arroz
eres la lechuga de mi ensalada
eres los frijoles de la torta
eres el cilantro y cebolla del taco

My mind started to wander from that point and since they were coming up with their own new lyric lines, what if we expanded this to their world. We want our students to see and think Spanish outside our four walls. What if we had students try to apply their learned vocabulary to music they listened to?

How cool would it be if students were listening to their favorite artist and suddenly realized they could translate lines from the song? But not all students enjoy music, so you could have students apply this to movie lines or books quotes as well. This is one way the students can take OWNERSHIP of the language.

I would let the students know that the quotes have to use vocabulary or grammatical structures they have learned that year in your class, otherwise they are just going to find anything and just translate it. The idea is for this to be spontaneous, but a little nudge to start thinking about Spanish in their own everyday lives is a good start. You might turn this into an assignment of 5-10 lines per semester or offer it for extra credit. I think once students start seeing Spanish in things that they actually find interesting, their motivation for the language is going to increase.