I already mentioned the brilliant Spanish textbook entitled Gente Joven 1. I like this textbook because each topic is linked to the Hispanic culture and the exercises are fun, engaging and challenging. Although I know some of my colleagues are completely against textbooks, I do think they are still useful especially when you teach in a school which lacks technology. I do not use textbooks all the time in each lesson but it gives me ideas about what to teach and how. As I wrote in another post, I started from scratch in my actual school. There was no Spanish at all, so having a textbook really helped me developed the curriculum for the middle school.

I am using Gente Joven 1 with my grade 6 and 7 students (11-14 years old) and then I am moving on to Gente Joven 2 with grade 8 (14-15 years old). In grade 9 and 10, our students are preparing for the IGCSE Cambridge exams so I am then covering the topics of the syllabus which are basically a revision from the middle school years (sadly enough!).

It is actually the first year I am using Gente Joven 2 with grade 8 and I am thoroughly enjoying it as I enjoyed using Gente Joven 1. The tasks are still fun and students-oriented. The first chapter is aimed at revising the knowledge students have gained from the previous book and one of the topic is about TV and series. I can hear some readers say "oh no! Not again!" but what we did in class was different from what we usually do: the different TV programs...

We spent several lessons on this topic and practised the main skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing.

• Reading comprehension: First, we read a description and interviews in the book about the Argentinean TV series Rebelde Way. I put an episode from YouTube on the school blog so that the class could watch it and see how telenovelas are like.
  Then we read another resource I created about the Spanish TV series Cuéntame. Again, I put a link to an episode on the school blog.

• Speaking activity: I then asked the students to work in pairs and to pretend their job was to create TV series. They had to come up with a project of successful TV series. They had to think of a story, the characters, the music... They also had to show a short extract of the series: either a short episode or a trailer. Their task was to present their project to TV producers and sell it to them. They had two lessons to prepare their presentation and then they had to present it in front of the class (the rest of the class were the "producers"). I recorded the presentations and embedded their recordings on the school blog.

• Writing task: while the students were presenting their project, the rest of the class was to listen carefully to their presentation. They had to pretend they were big TV producers and their task was to choose the TV series which would be most successful. They had to take notes and then write a report about the TV series they chose, why they chose it and why they thought it would be successful. They had to use sentences such as "se recomendaria..."or "creo que esta serie va a tener éxito porque..."

This sequence of lessons was a successful learning experience because students were very much involved. They loved to create and invent and they used the language for a clear purpose. I know that without having to repeat and learn the vocabulary the "traditional" way, they now know how to say in Spanish "it is about...", "the story", "the script", "the characters".... because they had to use those words for a purpose. Students also had to recycle old structures such as describing people "the main character is tall, blond and has blue eyes...". Besides, not only students had to speak and to present a topic confidently, they also had to listen to each others so that they could write their report. This is something I often miss in my lessons: students do nice presentations but the rest of the class is not really interested in listening. This time, it was much better in that sense.

What about you? Do you have any sequence of successful lessons to share?