Strategies
Each part of the unit will be accompanied by written questionnaires that will connect aspects previously used and that will facilitate the ability to first organize their ideas and then provide support for them. This phase of the unit is very important, since these students at this age are capable of reflecting and reinforcing this critical thinking in order to have their own points of view without having to repeat or agree with other people's points of view or ideas.
In order to help students understand different art styles and their representations, they will be introduced to Spanish history, especially the Pre-history, when many different cultures and civilizations settled in various parts of the Peninsula. In this part of the unit, students will be prompted to read simple texts in Spanish provided by the teacher, along with various power-point presentations, to illustrate where the settlements were, and examples of the art they produced. One of the activities that will be introduced in this stage of the unit will consist of introducing students to the French comic character called Astèrix (14). Students will read different sections of Astèrix en Hispania (15) in the target language. Since the comic has many different layers and could be difficult for students to understand all the puns and criticism, the teacher will provide them with different activities and tasks: after reading, understanding and reflecting in a couple of pages in class, the teacher will provide students with a copy of the same pages in which the teacher had previously erased all the dialogues. Students then will have to create their own. As a complementary activity for this section, students will visit Astèrix´ Spanish webpage (16) and will send the teacher an electronic postcard using the so-called "Multimediatix" link. A rubric for this exercise will be provided.
Once they are historically situated, they will learn about the geographical division and the cultural particularities of these comunidades autónomas, provincias y municipios. After going over the material and learning to locate them in a map, there will be different language related activities such as cloze texts (17), audio exercises, and matching exercises (matching words with their definitions).
After this, all of the students will be divided in groups of four of five and will be assigned to produce a large map of Spain with all the comunidades autónomas represented. The idea is to post these maps around the classroom so students will be able to first, locate the different bridges when we talk and learn about them and, second when they choose the bridges they will present to their peers as part of the final project, they will also have to draw them and place them in the map. As I mentioned already, I want students to become familiar with the geography of the country.
The part of the unit pertained to Santiago Calatrava will be more interactive since students will be asked to complete different tasks working individually and gathering information from Santiago Calatrava´s website first (12) and then surfing in the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias´ website (in its Spanish version) (18), compound of buildings designed by Calatrava.
As for a close up and detailed study of some of Calatrava´s bridges, the teacher will explain and show images describing some of them in terms of what kind of bridge it is, when relevant, and how the forces work in those bridges.
The teacher will bring a speaker, an architect (a Spanish speaker), to the classroom to talk about his/her job and then to talk about bridges. Students previously would have written sets of questions in form of an interview in Spanish.
The last couple days of the unit, students will be divided in various groups in order to play " Bridges Jeopardy". There will be questions on the content presented during the development of the unit.
As a final project to close the unit, students will be asked to prepare a power point presentation of at least 8 Spanish bridges, based on their choices. They will have to provide detailed information -in Spanish- on the chronology, location, who the architect is (in the case of the most contemporary ones), characteristics… Students will have to present their power point presentations to the rest of the class.
Comments: