Culture, description, family: Novice #authres this week!

Who doesn’t want to talk about cute kids in awesome clothes?

I’m sure you’re aware yesterday was Carnaval.  Thanks to Allison Wienhold’s post on great Carnaval resources, I was able to give my students an Edmodo assignment that exposed them to some culture (cute culture at that!) and asked them to practice our current ongoing targets, description and family.

I used the recommended resources for Carnaval Barranquilla in two ways.  Keep in mind that I see my students once a week and often intermingle cultural content with English questions into their at-home assignments as a way to help them interact with the culture without spending a lot of time in English on these things in class.

Schedule for Carnaval

I asked my students three simple questions about the schedule for Carnaval Barranquilla:

1. When and where is the dance party in January?
2. How many events in February are considered festivals?
3. Use “quiero ir a…” to tell me one event you want to go to at this Carnaval. Also tell me when it is.

Description of the Reyes Niños

Then, I asked these early Novice-Mids to tell me some things about the little reyes niños:

These two cuties are the child King and Queen (reyes niños) of Carnaval Barranquilla. Describe each with an adjective and tell me who their mother and father are (scroll down- there will be a lot of Spanish you don’t understand but I believe you can find their age and parents’ names).
http://www.carnavaldebarranquilla.org/reyesni…
4. La reina se llama ________ y tiene ______ años. Es _________ (descripción). Su padre es/se llama __________ y su madre es/se llama ____________.
5. La reina se llama ________ y tiene ______ años. Es _________ (descripción). Su padre es/se llama __________ y su madre es/se llama ____________.

What about your novice high or intermediate students?  How would you ask them to interact with this fun, culturally rich authentic resource? (And there is a Flickr group! With some amazing pictures- though some are not appropriate for classroom use.)

Enjoy some Carnaval-themed interaction this week.