Tumba Spanish Reader Novel Unit Guide Day of the Dead Día de los Muertos

Are your students reading Tumba, by Mira Canion? This resource is the PERFECT companion to guide students through this novice-level reader, assess comprehension and provide a creative outlet for the cultural aspects of the novel!

This is a novel unit guide for the Spanish novice-level reader titled Tumba, by Mira Canion. This resource does not provide the novel in full or in part. The novel is available for purchase from Wayside Publishing and TPRS Books. This is a Google Slides resource. This resource is fully editable to meet your students' abilities, your teaching goals and time constraints. Because it is a Google Slides resource, you can easily project it for whole-class viewing or you may print-and go, as the slides are sized for 8.5x11 printing.

This resource includes:

Objectives and campanadas (warmups) to introduce each chapter, vocabulary study, comprehension questions in English for each chapter, illustrating to demonstrate comprehension, character description, analysis, cognate recognition, three presentational writing assignments and a 2-part culturally related summative project as a presentational writing.

• Each of the ten chapter slides contains an objective (in red), a warmup/bellringer (campanada), targeted vocabulary (“new in blue”), and comprehension questions in English. You may choose to read chapters aloud, have students volunteer to read, or for students to read silently. 
• After reading Chapter 3 there is an assignment to pause and reflect on the organization and relationships between the characters. This is a presentational writing assignment.
• After Chapter 10, there are two summative presentational writing assignments. Ideally, students would choose one of the two options presented.

ACTFL Standards:

1.2: Students understand and interpret written language on a variety of topics.

1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of readers on a variety of topics.

2.1: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied.          

2.2: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the products and perspectives of the culture studied.           

3.2: Students acquire information and recognize the distinctive viewpoints that are only available through the foreign language and its cultures.

4.2: Students demonstrate understanding of the concept of culture through comparisons of the cultures studied and their own.

Learning objectives: 

• I can identify products, practices, and perspectives of Día de los Muertos
• I can identify cognates and understand them in written and oral texts.
• I can understand and use new vocabulary words.
• I can identify main characters, recurrent themes, and important events in the novel Tumba through various reading comprehension activities.
• I can create a cultural component (an ofrenda) related to the novel I read and the cultural topic I am learning about.