I wanted to share these two ideas, plus a few resources to guide our learners toward meaningful gratitude in our classes. This time, I come ready to share my resources!
I have had a joyous week with my learners integrating the song “Gracias” by the mexican band, Los Polinesios. I mainly use this song with my Fall semester Spanish 2 during the week before Día de Acción de Gracias to focus solely on gratitude and with Spring semester Spanish 2 during Día de San Valentín. I have used it with much success for over two years, and I have a sequence of activities ready to use when I teach with this song.
This week, we took time to learn about the band, played and learned with the song, and then the time came to do something different beyond the song tweets and song critiques, which are amazing, but I really wanted to make it more meaningful due to the powerful messages of the song.
After we worked with the song, I added Blackout Poetry, and I actually have done black poetry in the past, but this time, with Padlet instructions, my learners took it to an entire new level. It took an entire day for students to complete this activity but it was amazing !!
Setting Up Blackout Poetry to Maximize Its Benefits and Creativity
In the past, when I had done songs with blackout poetry, I pasted the verses into a document and centered the verses in the middle of the page, but I found a website through my search of making blackout poetry even better I stumbled on a blog post by the Allen Library. I am so grateful for this blog post as it connected me with a blackout poetry maker, you can paste any lyrics, and it will turn in to a blackout page in a matter of seconds! Try it for yourself at the link below!
What did I do after I generated this page? I took a screenshot and then converted it into an document for my students to blackout. Now, you don’t have to buy anything, but I also purchased stencils from Amazon to provide more opportunities to make their final products stand out.
I also prepared a Padlet that included clear instructions, expectations, tutorials, and inspiration. The part of this project in which I helped learners the most was in their message/theme creation and in making sure it all flowed well. After students selected their message/theme, they also had to write it in English because my plan is to display these in the walls.
This is what they looked like as students were working on these!
If you would like to work with this song, you can visit my Tpt store to buy the Gracias song activities perfect for November and February!
Also, if you would like to access my Padlet with instructions, my rubric, and my Gracias blackout document, click on the following link!
