Señor Wooly Series: My Go-To Activities

Now that you’re a Señor Wooly convert, in the final post of this series I’ll be talking about my go-to activities for Señor Wooly songs and stories.

SLAP!

Slap is a game I learned of during Wooly Week 2019. It is basically the fly swatter game with song lyrics and paper. Print out key phrases (or funny ones) from the song. I like to have my slap cards a little bigger than the size of a business card. For novice learners, you can print them in Spanish. For more advanced, print them in English. Next play that portion of the song (the audio files on the Señor Wooly site are great for this). Students, in groups of two (maybe three) try to slap the card first. If they are correct, they keep it.

I recently put a twist on this game and put the cards at the end of the room on a table. Students stood at the other end, listened, when the sound clip ended, they ran to the table, looked for the card, and slapped it. Things got a bit crazy but it was definitely fun!

Creating Background Info

After students are familiar with the story and characters and might start to get bored with the plot line, I have them invent background information about the characters or plot. This doesn’t need to be a big project. Students might only write a line or two. It gives us a lot of new materials to work with. You can provide scaffolding for novice students with fill-in-the-blank or give them options. This works as a large class, group, or individual activity. For example:

• “No voy a levantarme”
• Justin doesn’t finish his English project. Why not?
• Justin’s mom seems really upset with him since she tricks him into going to school on a Saturday. Why is she so mad? What did he do?
• How did the clown end up in his locker?

• “Guapo”
• Who IS the ugly man Victor is so mean to? A friend, brother, himself in previous life?
• Who are the women at his side? Why do they put up with him? Where did they come from?

• “El banco”
• How did these two meet?
• If they did rob the bank, describe the heist.

The Marker Game

I first learned of the marker game from Allison at Mis Clases Locas. It seems simple because it is! You only need to write some true/false questions about the story or video. Students face off in groups of two. If the statement you read is true, they try to grab the marker first to win a point. If they grab the marker for a false statement, they lose two points. It gets heated.

Drawing Retell

I love to have students draw and retell a story. I’ll tell them to pick the 5 or 6 most important events/details from the video, draw them and then write quick captions (or a different student can caption them!). They share in groups. We can also cut these apart for matching activity or use the pictures to retell the video as a class. I often walk around and take pictures of their pictures so I can project them and we can talk about them.

Nuggets

Feeling tired or sick? Nuggets are a great feature of a pro subscription. They give students input in a variety of forms and are very hands-off for teachers. It’s nice to have a break every now and then…or do the nuggets yourself so you can reach your goal of owning ALL the avatars on the website!

There you have it, my go-to activities for almost any Señor Wooly story! What are your favorite activities?

Other Posts in this Series

Where do I Start?
Two Ways to Start a Unit
In What Order Do I Show the Videos?