The Perfect 20 Second Intro to Your World Events Activity

I wanted to improve my students’ reading because I noticed that some would stop reading if they found a word they didn’t know and give up.

They weren’t trained to go on and circle back for meaning, and I needed to model this important skill to them.

I found an engaging and quick way to model reading for them every day using world events, not necessarily just related to Spanish-speaking countries, starting in the third quarter for Spanish One and the first quarter for Spanish Two.

My Spanish 1 students report to me that few people read the newspapers in their homes – their parents read the news from the internet.

Only a handful of my students read the news – and they share that they love reading the news with me!

Starting with the third quarter, I introduce the news with this video and they love imitating the voice and the cadence and the words.

I usually pick something from BBC Mundo and look for headlines with cognates and vocabulary words. I steer away from upsetting news for my seventh graders. My freshmen can handle more compelling topics.

I use the snipping tool to capture the headline and the picture and we usually read the first paragraph or else the caption under the picture.  I read it first in Spanish.  Then, as a class, we go over the meaning.

Frequently students tell me that they something about ‘las noticias’ was on the news or someone mentioned the event – just like in Spanish class.  These three minutes a day help the students to see my class as being a link to the rest of the world and many mention at the end of the year that this class got them to start following the news more.

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