In Spanish 2, we’ve been working with an embedded reading that I created entitled, “El abrigo anaranjado” (The orange coat).  I created this reading because I wanted to work on some structures that would be important for viewing the “Alma” video (here) later.  As I was selecting terms and writing, the story started to take on an interesting shape and resulted in an adapted version of Julio Cortazar’s “La continuidad de los parques” (text here).  I’ve always loved the story and taught it in upper levels in the past.  As an embedded reading, it fit well in level 2.

In the story, a man is reading a book about two secret lovers.  The lovers make a plan to kill off another person, presumably the husband of the woman.  The man leaves to go kill him and walks through a park and into a house where he finds his target.  It is revealed that the man he wishes to murder is actually the first man who is reading the book.

For more information about embedded readings, visit this site.  I first created the final version of the reading.  I then eliminated parts and created a base version and a second version.  I’m not going to post the text for all three versions in the post, but they can be downloaded along with the Power Point file for the base version here:

el abrigo anaranjado – ER                                 abrigo base version – Power Point

Here’s what we did over a period of a few days:

1. I introduced new structures and asked personalized questions

2. we read the base story on Power Point slides with images

3. With student actors, we acted out the base story

4. I asked questions in Spanish about the base story

5. We translated the base story to English

6. I distributed version 2 of the story, and students read and marked the parts that had been added

7. We read version 2 aloud

8. I distributed version 3 (the final story) and students read individually

9. As a class, we discussed the story while I drew the events on the board