News in Slow Spanish
Description:
Listen to native speakers discuss the world news and much more in simplified Spanish at a slow pace. MP3 files can be downloaded and flashcards with new vocabulary, as well as grammar explanations and practice with expressions and pronunciation are provided.
Activity Ideas:
Interpretive: Students respond to a teacher’s checklist, true/false or multiple choice exercise. Exercises will be most successful if teacher provides salient vocabulary.
Interpersonal: Students form discussion circles where each student is given a role such as facilitator, literary luminary (where they pull out phrases from the reading), or connector (where they find connections between the reading and their own lives or current events). After listening to a podcast and preparing their task, students discuss the podcast including sharing what they have prepared with the group.
Presentational: Students create their own news podcast about their class, school or community. The stories can be real or fantasy-based.
Newsela
Description:
After creating a free account, teachers can create classes, assignments and gain access to a huge collection of high-interest and current articles in Spanish.
News in 4 minutes
Description:
Top news story is reported in 4 minutes or less daily. Video is provided along with a script of the news report. Older stories are also archived on the site.
Activity Ideas:
Interpretive: Students listen to one of the news broadcasts. Each student has a red/green indicator. After the newscast, the teacher asks the students a series of questions and responds with the indicators. For example, True or False—It will rain tomorrow. True or False—The main story dealt with a political issue.
Interpersonal: Students watch one of the news broadcasts. Next, organize students in groups of 4-5. The class comes up with the first story of the broadcast (e.g. First, they interviewed a woman about her cats) and then the first person adds a second line using the words After…, Then… The next person in the circle repeats the first two lines, adding a third. This is continued until all students have had an opportunity to participate. The group tries to orally recap the news cast. For example, first they interviewed a woman about her cats. Then, they showed some political protesters. Next, they showed soccer, etc.
Presentational: Students create their own "News in 4 Minutes" about their school, life or town. Student presentations are timed to be only four minutes and must include multiple segments.
Freedom Forum Front Pages
Description:
This site provides today's front pages of newspapers from the U.S., Asia, Caribbean, Europe, Middle East, North America, Oceania, South America and Africa.
Activity Ideas:
Interpretive: Students rank the top stories on the front page and categorize them based on content such as: sports, politics, entertainment, world news, environment.
Interpersonal: Using the presentational activity below, (a student-created front cover of their life's newspaper) students work in pairs. Their partner will ask them questions to gain further understanding of the “top stories”. Questions should be clarifying or follow-up questions such as: ¿Tenías muchas muñecas de Barbie o sólo la que pusiste en la foto? or ¿Qué piensas estudiar en la universidad?
Presentational: Students create a 1-page front cover of a newspaper about their life including pictures, headlines, stories and advertisements. Also, students create a graphic organizer (like a Spidermap from http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/spanish/) comparing how three different newspapers report the same event. Students write the name of the event in the center and other subtopics the articles are about. They then write the name of the paper under each subtopic to have a visual representation of how the event has been covered.
Kiosko.net
Description:
Just like with the Freedom Forum site, you can view the first page or front page of the given newspaper. Kiosko.net also provides links to popular articles in that day’s publication, links to particular articles and can take you to the full website of the newspaper, or search the general press, sports sections, economic press, tabloid, etc.
Activity Ideas:
Interpretive: Print off the front pages of 5-10 newspapers. Divide students into teams. Teams place their front pages on the map of the world. (Variations: each team has the same set of front pages or each team has a different or mostly different set of front pages.)
Interpersonal: Students play tic-tac-toe (called GATO) with questions pertaining to the website. Questions are written on the tic-tac-toe board allowing students to employ reading strategies and possibly encouraging them to take on more challenging questions to place themselves more strategically on the board. (Modification: Students pull the question from the envelope & pick where to play.)
More interpersonal ideas: Students describe the most potent image to a partner, then show that partner the front page to see if he/she can identify correctly the image described. Also, students can rank the stories in the front page or in the listing of articles in order of importance and then defend his/her choices to a partner.
Presentational: Economics/Sports ~ The website offers so many choices, it is a realistic virtual kiosko. Students will review various publications and select three in which they will advertise or publicize. Students create an advertisement or poster for an upcoming event.
wwiTV.com
Description:
View live TV from around the world. Channels can be searched by country (each country has several options), by News TV Channels (in different languages), Religious TV, or Webcam Streams.
Activity Ideas:
Interpretive: Students write a summary or draw a picture of what they have seen during one week.
Interpersonal: Students will interview each other to find out about what their partner(s) watched. Each group receives six poker chips and every time they ask a question they give one poker chip. Their goal is to get rid of the poker chips.
Presentational: Students keep a TV journal based on what they've watched.
Pluto TV
Description:
Watch live TV for free. Visitors can select "Latino" from the guide to see a nice selection of shows playing in Spanish.