Me duele & Body Parts Unit

At the SWCOLT/CCFLT Spring 2015 conference, Bryce Hedstrom presented on using jokes in the classroom. One of his jokes really stuck with me. It goes something like this:

There is a guy who is miserable. Everything hurts. When he touches his leg, it hurts. When he touches his stomach, it hurts. When he touches his head, it hurts. He is so sad because everything hurts. He yells, “Ouchhhh!”
He calls his mom. He says “Mom, everything hurts. When I touch my leg/head/stomach, it hurts.” (Room for lots of repetition here!) He yells “Ouchhhhh! How it hurts!” Mom says “My poor baby. Go to the doctor.”
He goes to the doctor, slowly, because everything hurts. The doctor asks him what’s wrong. He says “When I touch my leg, it hurts. When I touch my stomach, it hurts. When I touch my head, it hurts. Everything hurts!!”
The doctor looks at his leg. He looks at his stomach. He looks at his head and yells “¡A-ha! I know what the problem is!…… Your finger is broken.”

This is a perfectly comprehensible joke that provided lots of repetition, use of body part vocab, and lots of room for a student actor to ham it up. So, I constructed a unit based on this joke.

Target Vocab: it hurts, yells, touches, it’s broken, body parts

Day 1: Slides for me duele day 1
1. TPR
2. Whole Brain Teaching
3. Simón dice
4. Circle using photos (in the slides) and PQA (One class ended up talking about a boy who was so sad because his heart was broken.)
5. Codo Rojo Brain Break: students walk around the room. I yell out a color and a body part. They have to be the first to put that body part on that color.
6. Whiteboard Face-off: Students compete against their partner to translate the sentence first. Sentences are in the slides.

Day 2: Slides for me duele day 2
1. TPR and Simón Dice
2. Tell the joke with student actors
3. Song break with Selena’s Como la Flor (CANCIONES DE SELENA QUINTANILLA handout)
4. Draw the story using a storyboard (StoryBoard)
5. Listening Quiz (I designate Quiz-Writer as a student job, then display the T/F quiz on the board.)
(I teach 90-minute classes and I include lots of brain breaks. All of this may take more than one day.)

Day 3: Slides for me duele day 3
1. Dr. House clip as a hook/review. (I tried to MovieTalk the clip and it was not very effective.)
2. Show photos from the last class’ story and retell. (I assign a student the job of photographer.)
3. Choral Reading (Ay como me duele reading doc) (Ay como me duele reading pdf)
3. Display photos again from the last class. Mark the photos A, B, C, etc, but NOT in chronological order. As students re-read the story, have them label the parts of the story with A, B, C, to show which pictures match the story.
4. In pairs, students decide/debate which parts belong with which photos. Have one set of students move the pictures on the board into chronological order.
6. Blind retell. The student who is retelling will look at the pictures on the board. The student who is coaching will look at the story in front of them and help the speaker when they get stuck.

Day 4: Slides for me duele day 4
1. Write-Draw-Pass with sneaky input (thanks, Martina!)
2. Dictation Relay to prepare them for the quiz
3. Reading Quiz (me duele reading quiz)
4. Kindergarten Day 

Day 5: Slides for me duele day 5
1. Free-write
2. Students work on Duolingo/Quizlet/Señor Wooly individually on their computers
3. Oral Proficiency Assessment – as students are working on the computers, I call up each student to retell the story using their cartoon. (At this time, they will also turn in their storyboard which has their retell homework signature on it. If they don’t have their storyboard, I will have one available for them to use.) Thanks to Bryce, I have a GREAT rubric to grade their proficiency on. Bryce grades for improvement. If they improved from last time, they get an A.
4. Exit slip to have some accountability for Duolingo/Quizlet (Duolingo day form)