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OVERVIEW

Focus on: • Instructional Terms: Genre Study – Folktale • Instructional Terms: School Words – letra, palabra, espacio, oración, frase,

punto, signos de interrogación• Lesson with scripting in Spanish for La rana sedienta (The Thirsty Frog) • List of thematically-related books written in Spanish • ¡Ojo! – Things to keep in mind when teaching Spanish• Exploring language through regionalisms: street environment words • Exploring language through cognates: animal names

PREPARE TO TEACH

La rana sedienta (The Thirsty Frog)

Synopsis: A thirsty frog named Tiddalik drinks all the water in the world. The other animals try to make him laugh so he’ll open his mouth and let the water out.

InSTRuCTIOnAl TERmS

Genre Study: Folktale

A folktale is a generic term for the many kinds of narrative prose literature found in the oral traditions of the world. One of the many forms of folklore, folktales are heard and remembered, and they are subject to various alterations in the course of retellings. As they are transmitted through a culture, some folktales may pass in and out of written literature, and some stories of literary origin may cross over into oral tradition. An essential trait of folktales—and all folk literature—is their diffusion, and their passage from one generation to another, by word of mouth.

Animal tales, fables, tall tales, jokes and anecdotes, and “cante” fables (folk stories partly in song or verse), as well as myths and fairytales, are all kinds of folktales. Animal tales fall into two major categories: those, such as the trickster tale, in which animals have the power of speech and the ability to conduct themselves as humans; and those in which the animals’ human qualities are a convention accepted during the course of the narrative as in fables, with their moralistic endings.

School Words: letra, palabra, espacio, oración, frase, punto, signos de interrogación

Ensure students are familiar with “school” words used in this unit. Ask them to demonstrate their understanding of each term by pointing to an example of each on a visual display. Say: ¿Pueden encontrar la letra D en el cartel? (Can you find the letter D on the poster?) Hold up a common, clearly labeled supermarket item and ask: ¿Qué palabra creen que está impresa en este envase? (What word do you think is printed on this container?)

Scope and Sequence at a Glance

Introduce the world of environmental print and associate words with pictures

Genres• Folktale• Narrative fiction• Song

Print Awareness• Recognizing print in the

environment• Recognizing the function of print

Comprehension Skills and Strategies• Associating words with pictures

listening Skills • Developing listening skills by

hearing text read aloud

Writing• Constructing sentences by

selecting rebuses

Unit Guide for las letras en nuestro mundo (Print in Our World)

Destination Reading Course I – Spanish

Copyright 2007 Riverdeep Interactive Learning. All rights reserved.

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• letra (letter) • palabra (word)

• espacio (space) • oración, frase (sentence)

• punto (period) • signos de interrogación (question marks)

BEFORE READInG

Building Background

Start a conversation with children about animals to build on their background knowledge. Ask them: ¿me pueden decir los nombres de algunos animales? (Can you tell me the names of some animals?) Expect to hear common animal names. Then say: ¿Quién sabe el nombre de un animal de Australia? (Who knows the name of an animal that comes from Australia?) Students might know that kangaroos are from Australia.

Vocabulary Strategy: using Pictures

Have pictures, preferably photographs, of the following animals on hand: eel, emu, kookaburra, platypus, wallaby, and wombat. You can print them from an Internet image search.

Show children each image and tell them the name of the animal. Say:

• la anguila come peces. Vive en el mar. (Eels eat fish. They live in the ocean.)

• El emú come hierbas, hojas y pequeños insectos. Viven en Australia. (Emus eat grass, leaves, and small insects. They live in Australia.)

• la cucaburra come peces. Vive en árboles, cerca de los ríos en Australia. (Kookaburras eat fish. They live in trees near the Australian rivers.)

• El ornitorrinco come pequeños peces y animales que viven en los ríos. Vive en cuevas bajo la tierra cerca de los ríos en Australia. (Platypus eat small fish, and animals that live in the rivers. They live in burrows near the Australian rivers.)

• El ualabí come hierbas y hojas. Vive en las praderas, o los campos de hierba, de Australia. (Wallabies eat grass and leaves. They live in Australia’s grasslands.)

• El uombat come raíces, hierbas y hojas. Vive en cuevas bajo la tierra en Australia. (Wombats eat roots, grass, and leaves. They live in burrows in Australia.)

To check if students can correctly identify the animals, hold up each picture and ask students the name of the animal.

Comprehension Strategy/Skill: listening to Stories

Listening is the first step in the journey of learning to read. Listening to stories read aloud is one of the most important components of language and reading acquisition. Besides learning new words, listening to a story can introduce complex sentence structures. Literature uses more complicated language than that to which children would otherwise have had access, and that which beginning readers would be able to read independently.

Book list

This is a list of books written in Spanish about animal tales. Children will enjoy hearing these books read aloud.

Cuentos populares del Mediterráneo by Ana Cristina Herreros. 2007. Ediciones Siruela. Includes a variety of folktales such as The Mountain Goat and The Story of the Cat, among others.

Las medias de los flamencos (Cuentos de la selva) by Horacio Quiroga. 2004. Editorial losada. Tells how the flamingoes got their pink legs.

Copyright 2007 Riverdeep Interactive Learning. All rights reserved.

Unit 1: las letras en nuestro mundo

Destination Reading Course I – Spanish

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As children listen, they develop a sense of tone variation, stylistic voice, mood, and direct dialogue. Children also learn that characters act and speak in certain ways. Listeners try out conflicts in their minds and make predictions about subsequent events. They discover patterns of a story in various genres, all of which are routes for developing reading comprehension.

DuRInG READInG

Ask children to make their own drawings of the things the animals do during a second or third reading of the story.

Differentiated Instruction

Special needs Children: Children look for pictures of the different animals in the story and identify them. Extra Support: Have students act out the story. Advanced Spanish Students: Children write a list of the things the animals did to make Tiddalik give the water back.

AFTER READInG

Ask students the question under the light bulb icon in the reading as an informal way of checking their comprehension. ¿Puedes contar cuántas palabras hay en la oración? ualabí le contó historias graciosas. (5) (How many words are there in this sentence: Wallaby told him funny stories. – 5)

EXPlORInG lAnGuAGE

Y tú, ¿cómo dices...?

Regionalisms

The unit theme Las letras en nuestro mundo affords many opportunities for exploring the richness of the Spanish language when it comes to environmental print on the street. Tap into students’ diverse language backgrounds by commenting on the different word choices that are possible for words presented in this unit. Say to students: Y en tu casa, ¿cómo dicen (o cómo le llaman) a…?

• autobús (bus) Also known as: guagua (Puerto Rico); micro (Mexico); combi (Mexico); colectivo (Argentina); bus (El Salvador)

• PARE (letrero) (Stop sign) Also known as: STOP (USA, Spain); AlTO (Mexico, Central America)

• automóvil (car) Also known as: coche (Spain, Mexico, Argentina); carro (Venezuela, Puerto Rico); auto

Ask students if they know more words for bus, car, or other street objects.

Unit 1: las letras en nuestro mundo

¡OJO! (Watch out for . . .)

Many of the words used in La rana sedienta might be unknown to children. You might need to act out or explain the following words: sediento (thirsty), desierto (desert), riachuelo (stream), estanque (pond), and soñoliento (sleepy).

Copyright 2007 Riverdeep Interactive Learning. All rights reserved.

Destination Reading Course I – Spanish

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la misma raíz

Cognates

Cognates, or words in English and Spanish that share the same origin, offer a natural scaffolding that children can use to “grow” their vocabulary in both languages. Help children see these links between the two languages by commenting on the words presented in this unit that are examples of cognates.

The words kangaroo, kookaburra, wallaby, and wombat have their word origins in aboriginal Australian languages. Display the words below and say to children: Hay palabras en esta unidad que son muy parecidas en inglés y español. Vamos a estudiar algunas de ellas. (There are words in this unit that are very similar in English and in Spanish. Let’s study some of them now.)

• canguro (kangaroo) • cucaburra (kookaburra) • emú (emu)

• ualabí (wallaby) • uombat (wombat)

Challenge students to name more animals whose names are similar in Spanish and English.

• león (lion) • lince (lynx) • tigre (tiger)

• jaguar (jaguar) • puma (puma) • elefante (elephant)

• gorila (gorilla)

THE READInG-WRITInG COnnECTIOn

Cooperative learning: Drawing and labeling an Animal

Have children draw a picture of one of the animals from the story. Write the names of the animals on the board, and have students copy the word onto their drawing.

Unit 1: las letras en nuestro mundo

Copyright 2007 Riverdeep Interactive Learning. All rights reserved.

Destination Reading Course I – Spanish