Literacy in the World Language classroom is a true passion of mine. I could go down a rabbit hole citing the research that justifies how important it is for your students to be reading as early as possible in the target language. Reading, or interpretive reading as we call it in WL, comes in a lot of shapes and sizes. From guided readings, gallery walks, book studies, and reader’s workshops…there really is a lot of options out there besides sitting down and reading a 3 paragraph story. But, what about the activities that you do after the story? If you are teaching in 2021, you know that giving kids comprehension questions isn’t keeping their attention as well as it once did. This is why I have partnered up with my Instagram bestie, Courtney Jackson (Profe. Zulita) to share some great ways that you can differentiate post-reading activities for short stories and leveled-readers. One of the newest resources that Courtney has put together for literally ANYONE to use is a Netflix Novel Summary project!
First, I want to give Profe. Zulita a huge shout-out because her resources are a hit in my classroom. I first started using her Smashdoodle template last year with my 2s and they really enjoyed it. This year, I have a few of her other resources, like the Super 7 CI story and activities, and I love how well they are written and how they promote target language usage amongst the students.
Netflix Novel Summary
If you are reading a novel this year and are looking for a culminating project, look no further. Profe. Zulita has put together this amazing Netflix Novel Summary project template for any language!!!! This resource has a funny story behind it. I saw something similar on TikTok and immediately messaged Courtney to tell her that if she made a template (which is right up her alley), I would feature it on a blog post because I knew that I wanted to use it with my level 2s during our first novel in the second quarter. Well, she messaged me saying she had seen the Tiktok and made the template already LOL!!!! The best part is that she received permission from Carrie Toth, a fellow language teacher, blogger, and author, to use one of her books as an example! You can purchase the book here!
This Netflix Novel summary has students writing a chapter summary for each chapter of a book. Students can write a brief overview as the chapter description, and then also include more detail in the actual episode page. Each image in the chapter overview is hyperlinked to take you to a new slide where the chapter is described in more detail. So, not only are you squeezing valuable opportunities for input, you are also including great technology resources into your curriculum!
This project can be adapted for any language, any book, and any content area. I love that this activity can be used as the students are reading and can be worked on after each chapter. If you are not 1-1 or prefer for students to do things on paper, you could definitely print out blank copies of the pages and have students complete it that way.
This Netflix Novel Summary is also great for FVR reading (free-voluntary reading) and independent novel projects.
What else can we do with this?
- Gallery Walk Presentations – when it is time to present, ask students to have their projects out on a device. Each student goes to another persons computer and looks at their presentation. Students can fill out a rubric for each other and provide feedback about the projects. This would be awesome if the project was used in independent novel projects and there were different books being used.
- Book tastings – say you do this for an independent novel study project and you have students create these. You could keep these examples as a way to do book tastings for years to come! A book tasting is where students sample different books before they pick one that they like for an independent novel study or FVR. If you have the time and energy, you could even make these yourself for the book tastings.
- Presentational Speaking – I am a fan of having kids present in the target language and I think this is a great opportunity for them to get up and present their book to the class. So it isn’t so repetitive, you can assign different chapters to different students so the same chapter isn’t presented 100 times in a class period. You can also assign this as a group project and have the same number of groups as there are chapters. Students can take notes about the different chapters that their peers present over.
Courtney has been generous enough to allow my readers a free copy of this resource for the next 72 hours!!!! The price changes Friday, October 15th so hurry and grab yours today.
Other resources
Are you looking for other resources that promote a strong sense of literacy in the classroom? Courtney at Profe. Zulita has over 270 products on her TPT store with well over half of them devoted to fostering a strong sense of literacy skills in the classroom. A few of my favorites are her Super 7 stories, story builder activities, and her Boom cards! Check out all of her resources and more on Teachers Pay Teachers.