Ironically, as our semester winds down here at school, I finally remembered to blog. This is a short one, but important as we consider what activities to keep and toss for the upcoming semester. I am here to plug Martina Bex’s Mundo en Tus Manos (which I am shortening to MeTM for brevity’s sake), a short newspaper for Spanish language learners.
Okay, to preface, I am completely biased because I love what Martina’s done. But if you haven’t purchased a license yet, let me try to convince you.
It’s great input for the students. Okay, first and foremost, this is most important. Martina does a wonderful job of paring down news stories and putting them in simple terms that high level novices and above can understand with little or no scaffolding. I also like that she includes footnotes of new vocabulary terms, and often tries to repeat these new words from week to week or within the same issue to get those precious repetitions for acquisition.
It keeps me updated on current news of interest to hispanohablantes. I have taken a pretty heavy duty self-imposed news moratorium since shortly before the election. I just can’t handle the negativity and anger coming from… well, lots of places. By reading MeTM, I can stay updated on what’s going on without having to put my anger filter in place. I also can have just a quick overview – reading the articles takes me about 5 minutes. (And for those of us who are distractible, I can’t fall into a news clicking rabbit hole.)
MeTM allows us to practice close reading. When it comes to in-depth reading, with special attention given to text type, headlines, and topic sentences, I find it much easier to work with non-fiction sources. MeTM is the perfect level of difficulty to make close reading potentially necessary, but short enough that the task isn’t overwhelming.
Reading the news expands our students’ minds and allows for further discussion of the topics. Many young people are relatively ignorant of the world around them – not because they’re intentionally sheltered, but because of their life circumstances. They’re young and without many resources of their own. I teach in a rural area of Nebraska. Many of my students have barely left the state, much less the country. (And if they have, they go to resorts and the like, which is not an accurate representation of the culture.) In addition, my personality leads me to expand on the basic ideas presented in the text and allow students to express their views on the topic. I love that the news stories give us some basic understanding and background knowledge of a topic, and I can expand the lesson to fit my students.
It’s a really easy addition to your reading library. For only a couple of dollars per issue, MeTM is one of the best bargains to add to any reading library. Plus, you don’t even have to go to a store or pay shipping! You just have to walk down to the printer. It’s that easy!
Finally, and one of my favorites, it is perfect to use as a backup activity or brain break. Gone from work and need something for your sub? Leave your students an issue with a simple graphic organizer. (See an example here.) Finish your lesson way too early? Grab some issues and have students summarize what they read. Having a rough day and need to plan something that’s not work-intensive for you? There are tons of no or low-prep activities that you can come up with in a pinch to save your sanity. These are especially great lifesavers for newer teachers whose pacing is still in progress and don’t have many tools in their toolkit yet.
So to sum up, there are six great reasons to buy Martina’s Mundo en Tus Manos package for the spring, and I’m sure other teachers could come up with more. I can only hope that eventually some enterprising teacher does a similar thing for other world languages.
(In full disclosure, Martina did not at any point ask me to write this review. This is 100% my own love of her products.)
Making Good Mistakes 