How to introduce Brandon Brown quiere un perro

Right before winter break, we began reading Brandon Brown Quiere un Perro by Carol Gaab in my Spanish B class.  This is my second year with this group (mostly 7th graders), and I have noticed that they understand what they read fairly well, but have difficulty producing on their own.

We ended 6th grade by reading Pobre Ana, so this book was kind of taking a step backwards to review.  My goal was to use this book as a vehicle for teaching the grammar points more effectively. I wanted them to better understand word order and sentence structure.  I kept detailed notes on my lesson plans and created a reading packet for my students. Unfortunately, the publisher requested that I no longer sell or share the packet, but I am happy to share my notes!

Introducing the book

Before we began reading, I started with some personal questions. 

• ¿Quién tiene un perro?
• ¿Cómo se llama tu perro?
• ¿Cómo es tu perro?

This took about 15 minutes and could have gone on longer if I let it. Then I asked students (in Spanish), “So why are we talking about animals?” I told them that we would be spending the next couple of weeks…BIG REVEAL…reading a book! I have a class set of readers, so I assign each student a number and we keep the books in an old shoe sorter that I’ve converted into mailboxes.

I explained to students that I knew what sophisticated readers they were in their other classes, analyzing and discussing deep issues. While this book may seem a little bit beneath their English brilliance,  it would be 100% understandable to their Spanish brains! This seemed to curb some of their comments about the repetition. =)

Beginning to read

I showed them the glossary and how they could use that as a tool while reading. Then we began! I read out-loud, stopping along the way for simple yes-no comprehension questions.  

The first chapter is REALLY repetitive, and my kids made a big fuss about how easy it was.  So in the first class, I passed out the comprehension questions and assigned them for homework.  This was a mistake. Very few students remembered how to answer the question ¿Cómo son?.  For the next classes, I made sure to hit that hard during the pre-reading conversation, and we used class time the following day to answer the questions.