Wow, am I behind! Life took over, per usual, and my goals of providing materials went out the window with my sanity. Not really, but it did get busy there for quite a while! Sorry for the delay if you’ve been following to see how I utilized this series.

Here’s the good news: I finished the rTVE series with my level 4s the week before finals and the response was even better than I thought. They were SO invested in the characters. They hated the ending, which I absolutely used to my advantaged and added a prompt on their final exam. More on that in another post, but their engagement has fueled me even more to encourage other teachers to use it.

I wrote (and now just deleted) this whole paragraph about how I didn’t really have any materials to share. Scratch that, upon looking back, I have, at least, some pretty simple things to share out! Here is the editable Canva template for your classroom use that I used for episodes 2 through 4! If you find an error, please kindly let me know.

Important: Be sure to check where I skipped parts of the series to evaluate it for your own classroom use!

Episode 2

• Show 00:00 and STOP AT 17:21 (after: lo vamos a solucionar) Some schools may not have a problem showing the next scene. Célia and Moha are dressing down to go into the ocean. There is nothing explicit here, however, I made the decision it was not appropriate for my school. I skipped it.
• Resume at 22:00. My students were MAD when I skipped.

What I did, briefly:

• Before we started the episode, I had students to a reto or a challenge for 3 minutes. I paired them up, gave them a white board and told them they had 3 minutes to write a summary of episode 1. I am always trying to work on summarizing skills, so this fit in well. I gave candy to the best summary!
• After watching part 1 of Episode 2 (the first 17 minutes or so), I had students work in pairs with whiteboards to write a description of the screenshots to re-cap Episode 2, part 1. I gave them only 30 seconds so it wouldn’t take too long.
• I also used a video (posted in the slides) to explain what no tienes abuela means, since it’s so central to Célia and Moha’s brief falling out.
• Then, I told them that we would have to skip a few minutes of the show. As I mentioned, they were mad, but I hopefully somewhat made up for it by telling them with emojis what happened. They worked with a partner to write out the sentences and “solve” the sentence equations.

Episode 3

• START episode at 8:23. So, here Célia and Moha exchange in some innuendos/sexual banter about body parts. Even if you haven’t seen the series, you can guess enough that this is not appropriate for school. Even though 99% of my students would likely not grasp what the joke was in Spanish, it was a definite skip for me.

What I did, briefly:

• The theme of the sea really starts to take shape in episode 2, so before moving on, I wanted students to connect with the idea of the ocean and it’s multiple representations for both characters. We discussed what it could represent and how wildly different, or similar, ideas the characters have about the sea. See template slides.
• Since I skipped the first 8 minutes, I had students read a short summary and I asked simple comprehension questions. I realized I had to really hit hard on why 18 is an important age.
• During this episode, we talked often about why Célia is upset that she didn’t get in trouble. Is it fair that Moha is in trouble? Maybe yes, maybe no, I liked the students grappling with this.

Episode 4

(This should better be titled 10 minutes from Episode 4)

• EVALUATE: 00:00 – 9:00 for yourself. I skipped it altogether. Moha goes to Célia’s house.
• SKIP 9:00 – 21:15: If my memory serves me, the last few minutes around 19-21 may be appropriate for some schools. Check it out.
• START at 21:16 minutes. So, yes, I only showed the 9 or 10 minutes from this entire episode. They were annoyed, but alas, I told them it was not school appropriate. They got over it.

What I did, briefly:

• We read through a very brief summary of what they “missed.” I asked basic comprehension questions. That was it.
• Even though this episode is short, man does it pack a lot of tough discussion topics into it. I stopped after Matías and Célia have this discussion about US vs THEM (¡Ahhh Célia is showing growth, developing empathy, clase!). They were bothered that I stopped right after this intense moment, but I had a strong feeling most of it went over their heads… and yes, why, yes it did. SO, I used a transcription of the conversation. I had them re-read it, we discussed it, we challenged each other about divisions in our school, in our communities, in the wider world: white vs. Black, Christians vs. Muslims, Spanish vs. English, Democrats vs. Republicans, Poor vs. Rich, you name it. US vs THEM is a concept every student can understand (sadly).
  • After we had this discussion, two students came up to me thanking me for having this conversation. They stated that this is an issue they want to address more at our school and it meant a lot to have everyone think about it through the show. YES, this is why this show is powerful. Their comments made my day, my week, my semester!

And that’s a wrap for these episodes. I’ll do another post on episodes 5 and 6 during this winter break so that you have all the materials I have used for the series, up until this point. If you end up using this series in class, please let me know! I would love to get a collab drive going if you are all willing to share. I plan to teach this again next year.