Using Señor Wooly for more than Nuggets!

If you're a Spanish teacher and you focus on providing Comprehensible Input (CI) to your students, you probably know of Señor Wooly.  If you don't, do yourself a favor and check it out here.

Many of us LOVE Wooly because of the ability to play fun songs in the target language, to engage students in a love for the crazy stories, and to take a break (or use for sub plans) and assign students "nuggets" to work on independently that provide them with great input.

BUT! Last year during Wooly Week, I learned SO MUCH from the Wooly team about how to milk a story and really get kids HOOKED on the story before you even showed the video.  Now, when I plan to use a new Wooly song, I keep these ideas in the back of my mind.  I try to really get to the heart of the story and push past the surface of the songs and use them for everything they are.

Of course, using the nuggets, and the supplemental materials like the embedding readings and the pre/during/post viewing activities that are provided in the pro subscription are a GREAT a idea.  Here are some of my favorite ideas that aren't included in the supplemental materials.

Previewing the Story Before Showing the Video

  • Doing the Bunch of Hunches activity from Wooly Week 2019 where students make predictions about images they see.  For example, you may post a picture of a character from the video and students have to decide if that person is good/bad/etc.  Or they have to decide if that moment is going to be exciting or boring.  It gets them thinking about the images, using their imagination, and making connections to the story. 
  • Creating a storyboard (empty boxes for students to draw pictures) with sentences from the embedded readings... they'll just think it's a random story you're going to work with, but they'll get familiar with the characters and story line.
  • Telling a Visual Story of the song before they even know it's a song.  I love doing this because I can really add in some details from the story that I know will hook them, and I can also check for comprehension as I tell the story to make sure they're with me.
  • Picture Walk of the stills from the video before they really know what the song's about. The key for this one is to keep your statements open and let the students' opinions and ideas be possible as you discuss the images.  They'll get connected to the story, and then when they watch the video, they'll have "AHA!" moments or "WHAT?!?!" moments.  Evoking more emotion is always better in my opinion.
After Viewing the Video Once Students Are Familiar With the Story
  • Reviewing what happens in the story in a video by filling out a story map graphic organizer.
  • Doing a Write & Discuss to summarize what happens in the video or to describe what a character is like or to predict what might happen next.
  • STATIONS! I just tried this yesterday for the first time.  I used Martina Bex's Editable Stations Template to create a few stations (I found 3 worked well for my 50 minute class).  Some station ideas: Nuggets, Video game (Rocola), puzzle (found in supplemental materials), Draw 1,2,3 from Martina's packet, putting events in chronological order and then re-writing a new version of the story, re-writing the lyrics (I'd provide students with a copy of the lyrics and list of similar vocabulary in the TL they could pick from)... and those are just a few!  I found it was ideal to give students about 12 minutes at each station, plus time to explain the activities and transition... I think if I did this again, it would be much faster.
  • Draw images/write predictions for the character in the video after it's over.  This works especially well for the videos that already have sequels or end on a cliff hanger.  I would then take these images and use them to picture talk in Spanish about the future... I would do the same with written predictions.  Students may not have the language to use L2 to make predictions, but they could write them as an exit ticket in L1 and I can tell the class the predictions in L2 the next day (making sure to use comprehensible language!)
I hope you've found some of these ideas helpful! What are your favorite "out of the box" ideas for working with Señor Wooly?!

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