As you can see, I was not much of a planner in those days...I'm much better now-but still not where I'd like to be.
Needless to say, the students HATED reading that book. I did not have any engaging activities for them to do to supplement the reading-and the only way I checked for comprehension was through the questions at the end of each short chapter. Students did not know what the questions were asking, but could very easily answer them in Spanish as they were pretty directly written from the text.
I did not give up the unit the following year because I truly believe that it is important to give students a cultural reference point for things that are undoubtedly going to show up in their lives. As soon as we start learning about Miguel de Cervantes and his famous novel, images and references show up all over the place! It's amazing how that happens every year...
Since that horrible first year teaching level 5, I have added and taken away many different activities associated with the book.
- I have had students illustrate parts of the book to use as visual cues for them to summarize in their own words what is happening.
- I have had students re-create the novel in a video or animated short.
- I have had students perform skits of modern-day chivalry to prove that it's not "dead."
- I have taken students to a local theater to see Man of La Mancha performed. (I wish that was an option every year).
- I have held a film festival in my classes comparing the musical "Man of La Mancha" to the movie "They Might Be Giants".
- I have shown the musical video of Coldplay's song "Don Quixote" to the class to show how the novel continues to influence popular culture
- I have taken students out for ice cream at the conclusion of the novel. (Not for any educational value, but because we always shortened Don Quijote as "DQ" and naturally that brought up the desire to take a class field trip to Dairy Queen)
What I did this year:
This year I added a new activity to the end of Chapter two that I think the students really enjoyed-but I would definitely tweak it for future classes. I always think it's so funny how Don Quijote cleans and repairs the armor of his great-grandparents with cardboard, iron bars, and ribbons. Sometimes I feel like that fact goes over the heads of the students because they're taking the novel too seriously. It needs to be stressed that it is a SATIRICAL novel, poking fun of Medieval times and its traditions. I split my classes into groups of 3-4 students and gave each: one empty box (boxes that carried a ream of paper for the copy machine), offered 2 rulers (the iron bars), and some cheap painters tape 1q. The students then got to work creating their own version of Don Quijote's armor.
The activity took about 20 minutes for them to complete and I know they enjoyed it because pictures ended up on the stories of many snapchat friends-it was ok for them to do that because they were sharing an educational experience with their friends, right??
What I want to change for next time:
Although the students had fun creating their armor, I wanted them to illustrate something on the armor about the first two chapters we've read but there wasn't enough time to do that during the block. I would also have liked them to describe their armor using Spanish vocabulary to the class-again, not enough time. We could still do that with the pictures I took of all the groups, and we still may next class. I could also print out the pictures and have them tell the story of Don Quijote up to that point using their own words. See what happens if we take the time to reflect?? Lesson plans make themselves...
What have you done in your classes for the novel Don Quijote?
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