Teaching literature -imagery

I don’t know about others, but teaching literature is always a struggle for me. I want them to interpret it, not translate it.

Here, students chose lines from a segment of Como agua para chocolate and drew representations of them. Stick figures were perfectly fine, but I wanted to honor a particular student who is an amazing artist, so I told her I would be posting hers.

The students have also acted things out in order to both gain and demonstrate comprehension. For example, when reading La casa de los espíritus (portion in textbook), each group was assigned a scene from the story that they had to act out. One person narrated, while the others portrayed what was going on with the other characters. They had assembled basic props from classroom materials and each had name tags so you knew which characters they were. They did so great with it!

We just did something similar with El ahogado más hermoso del mundo. So far, we have been focusing on the different reactions of the men and women towards the drowned man. The class separated by males and females. As key phrases appeared on the screen, the gender that it was referring to had to demonstrate what it “looks like”. For example, as we read about the men being tired and wanting to throw the drowned man back into the sea, the boys in the class had to act that out. The guys really enjoyed the part where they are yelling at the women about getting out of the way!

I appreciate any feedback and other ideas for teaching literature without translation.

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