Rebeldes de Tejas / PBS

For our last unit of the year my Spanish two class began reading Rebeldes de Tejas by Maria Canion and published by TPRS Publishing (hopefully next year we can read this novel towards the beginning/middle of the year). Immediately, I began scouring the Internet looking for ways to supplement the unit and, at the same time, provide comprehensible input. The search paid off! I found an amazing video library of PBS's documentary series "Latino Americanos." The library contains six full episodes on immigration, immigrant rights and the changing nature of what it means to be "American." Each episode is around an hour long and, while this might be too much for your classroom, there are previews for each episode ranging from 30 seconds to four minutes. Further, there are 35 "clips" each about 10 minutes in length and mainly consisting of biographies of notable Hispanics. There are two videos perfect for teaching Rebeldes: One is a description of the Battle of the Alamo and can be found here and the other is a biography of the life of Juan Seguín found here. The videos are slow enough as to be comprehensible for my level 2 students with minimal scaffolding and vocabulary instruction. I made a couple of listening comprehension activities to accompany the videos but I'm not happy with them quite yet. I'll post when they're ready.