My Spanish 3 students have been working through La Vampirata and we are just about to wrap it up this week! In anticipation for the ending, I chose a final project for students to complete last week.
Students were given four options and had to complete two out of four.
They had to complete one of the following postcard options and then one of the other available options toward the bottom:
Option # 1: Jaguar Temple Postcard
Go to Google Maps and take photos (screenshots) of the Jaguar Temple. You need to include at least
(1) one aerial picture (or map) of the city
(2) one picture of a path leading up to the temple
(3) one picture of the temple
(4) two other pictures of the area
After getting an aerial shot (see example above), students dragged and dropped the orange man (in the bottom right corner of the screenshot above) to a location near the temple. In doing so, students were able to virtually tour the palace and take screenshots (instead of snapshots) to include on their postcards. The image below is a screenshot I took as an example.
After designing the front of their postcards, students wrote a short message on the back (5-6 sentences in Spanish) detailing their fictional trip to the temple and what they saw while there.
I must say that my favorite was this one below! The student did a great job grabbing the necessary screenshots, laid them out in a nice way, and added text to make the front look like a real postcard. The best part, though, is that he photographed himself and included himself in three of the pictures below!! How cool is that??
Option # 2: Cartagena Postcard
Pretend you are Sara and you are writing a letter home to your mother from Cartagena. Include at least two pictures on the front of you postcard. Write at least 10 Spanish sentences on the back of your postcard describing Cartagena and your adventures so far.
For this one, students needed fewer pictures, but more text. I had about an equal number of students choose each postcard option, and I’m very happy I decided to give an option of doing either one of these.
Below is one example of a postcard from Cartagena written from Sara to her mother.
Option # 3: Cast of Characters
Next, you are going to create a cast of characters for the Vampirata movie. Select appropriate celebrities to fill the roles of:
Sara
Marta
Rafael
Lucas
Daniel
Pepe
On one slide, put a picture of each person along with a caption telling why you chose each person (1-2 sentences in Spanish) to fill the selected roles.
One student turned in a cast with an advertisement for the movie: La Vampirata The Movie, rated Rrrrrrr. 🙂
Some of the casting was a little….interesting 🙂 But I love how the students worked to justify their actors and actresses! I can only hope Mira Canion would approve!
Option # 4: Map of the Journey
Create a map that outlines the journey that Sara took from her hometown to Cartagena. Include at least 2 pictures with captions (in Spanish) for each place where she stopped.
This was, by far, the least picked option for students and I need to work on making it more specific and more interesting for next year (any ideas?).
Nevertheless, I did get a couple really nice maps of Sara’s journey. Here is a sample below:
I hope you enjoyed reading about our Vampirata projects and seeing some of my amazing students’ work! Hopefully, this has given you some inspiration for creative ways to assess student knowledge in a fun way!
If you were in my class, which of the two assignments would you have chosen?
Have you read Vampirata with your students? If so, what did you think of it?
Let me know below in the comments!!
¡Hasta luego!
Profe Pistole
the NISH 
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