Mi Viaje Project Created by Janel Brennan
This is a project that I do with my Spanish level II's. Feel free to copy any part of it. Let me know how you like it or if there are any changes needed.

Mi Viaje a ____________
Level: Spanish II
Length: 4 weeks

The student will...

- create a scrap book of an imaginary trip to a Spanish speaking country.
- research general facts and points of interest of their chosen country.
- write diaries based on three of the five days of their trip in Spanish.

Prewriting
Day 1:
Using the overhead, I asked students to think about a common city that they would have all visited in the US. Depending on the class, we picked Baltimore, NYC or Philadelphia. Then I asked them, as a tourist, what would be the major historical, cultural and entertainment spots they would see.

I made a web on the overhead and put the city we chose in the center. Then I made about six little circles around it. As the students told me places they would visit, I placed these names in the different spots of the web. Then I took one of the places, for example, "the zoo" and webbed that off as I asked students to tell me (in Spanish) what they would do there using simple sentences.

After we did this for a few of them, I asked them to write a paragraph about their trip to NYC (or the other cities) as if it were their first time going there and gave them some guide questions. Like, What did you see?, What did you do? What did you eat? Did you meet anyone? etc. We have 78 min classes so this whole activity took one class. They turned in their rough drafts. The next class, I gave them back their journals w/ circles on the mistakes and then they paired up w/ someone for some peer editing and then they turned in a final draft.

I did this BEFORE telling them that they were going to write three pages in Spanish for a project just to show them that it IS possible and they DO have the ability.

The Project
The next class, I introduced the project and let them pick the country that they were interested in. I did not allow more than three people to do the same country. The only thing they could work on in a group was the country info. We then went to the library for one class period. In the library they had very specific things to research about their country. They could work w/ someone or work alone. They had to show me their completed sheet for a grade. (I had several students that managed to goof off for 78 min!) I also told them that for pictures, they could go to the local travel agency, draw their own pictures, or download them off of the Internet. I did require that they had a caption under each one in Spanish. The ones who used Comptons Encyclopedia or Encarta had some great color pictures. But I told them they had to write a caption that showed me WHY they included that in their journal. Just printing out the picture and sticking it in their project shows me that they have a nice printer! Some even drew themselves in the picture.

We then worked on an itinerary. (three main activities that would take place during each day)
[See bottom of library worksheet]

After having them create a "web" (like the one we did in class previously) for their country, I required a look at their rough drafts at the end of each week. They only needed to write about three of the days in a 5 day trip. They also had to keep in mind that they were on a limited budget and had to consider the distance between cities they were interested in. I was very pleased with the guided writing that we did. I did this project the last two years and this was the first time I gave them more tools for writing in Spanish. The results were 100% better this year.

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