A few months ago I saw a movie recommendation by the lovely Fatima Duerden on my Facebook Timeline, and I immediately bought "Carlitos y el Campo de los Sueños" on the Spanish Amazon site.The DVD was delivered very quickly but it took me weeks to find the time to watch it; with two young children I don't have a 100 minutes to sit in one place:-). Today I am off sick,on my own all day, and to cheer myself up, I watched Carlitos first thing in the morning. Well, the movie ended in tears for me, so much about cheering up, but I have enjoyed it a lot and found it useful as a language teacher.
The short story is here. I am not a film critic (imagine all the tissues I'd have to buy), so I will just list some ideas I could use the movie for in the Spanish classroom. Before watching it with your class, please make sure your school has the necessary permissions to show the DVD. Here is the trailer from YouTube:
I would recommend the movie, because...
I would recommend the movie, because...
- football is the main theme, which is great with all the World Cup activities in the classroom.There is no time to watch the whole movie, we will focus on the football/school scenes, a few each lesson. Football is a good way to engage boys, and even I lost my breath when the Real Madrid star Raúl appeared in the movie!
- the pupils are about the same age as the children in the movie, and they speak in Spanish! It is good for them to see that all the words, sentences and skills they learn are actually used by others and not just by us every Thursday.
- it teaches vocabulary. We could look out for football words like fútbol, portero, jugador, la selección, España, Francia, cero-cero, penalti, el balón, el campeonato, disparar, pasar, etc. Personal qualities like fuerte, alto, potente, rápido, generoso,egoísta. Expressions like Somos un equipo, Suerte amigo, A por ellos, A ganar . Places in the school like la biblioteca, la clase, la cocina. Jobs like entrenador, director, jugador, padre,cocinera. The names of the main characters have special pronunciation rules: Hipólito, CaRlitos, GutiéRRez, NaCHo. If you want to be very informal, you could teach A qué mola, tío/tía, Eres una máquina.
- It teaches them that they don't have to know every single word to understand a situation, they can make guesses based on clues.
Enjoy the DVD and please let me know what movies you have used in the classroom!
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More football ideas on my blog:
