Practical Proficiency Podcast
Where world language teachers gather to transition to proficiency oriented instruction through comprehensible input. All through practical, real-life, teacher-friendly ideas that make teaching language more joyful! Hosted by Devon of La Libre Language Learning.
Practical Proficiency Podcast
Carnaval & Mardi Gras Unit Ideas: Why Carnaval is a Must-Teach Celebration | UNIT IDEAS Series
Step into the vibrant world of Carnaval! In this UNIT IDEAS mini-episode, we explore how this much-beloved celebration transcends mere festivities to become a powerful teaching tool for world language educators. Carnaval is not just a festival but a rich cultural phenomenon that allows students to connect with diverse traditions and identities.
From the historical origins of Carnaval to the various ways it’s celebrated across the globe, we dive deep into cultural narratives that shape identities. Learn how to creatively incorporate Carnaval into your language lessons with a list of ready-to-use ideas for your next Carnaval culture unit!
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Resources and links mentioned:
Carnaval de Québec Virtual Field Trip
Mardi Gras High-Frequency Reading
Dominican Republic Carnaval Virtual Field Trip
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What's up, keloke Et salut world language teachers. Welcome to the Practical Proficiency Podcast, where we make the transition to proficiency-oriented instruction in your world language class in a way that works for you, your unique context and teaching style, and doesn't sacrifice your well-being along the way. I'm your host, devon Gunning, the teacher author, conference host, curriculum creator and consultant behind La Libre Language Learning. This podcast is for the creative world language teacher like you who's ready to ditch the overwhelming pressure of switching to acquisition-driven instruction and CI overnight. You're ready to discover how using more target language in class can actually bring you and your students more joy. Instead of adding to your plate With practical, authentic and down-to-earth strategies that don't require reinventing the wheel or more training, we'll work together towards the magic of a community-based, target-language-rich classroom, rooted in the power of community and comprehensible input.
Speaker 1:Let's go of the Practical Proficiency Podcast. This is a special series of mini-sodes where, those times when you're looking to brainstorm for ideas for your next unit, these episodes have you covered. We'll be talking about ways that you can take the activities that you already have for common things that you're teaching or thematic units that you're diving into. Today's will be about a special cultural topic and ways that you can make it more exciting have some new things to add to your toolkit and some really cool ways to explore the really common things that you're teaching every year. It's like having a little teacher brainstorm session right in your pocket so you can listen to it while you're doing lunch duty or car duty or on your way to work all that good stuff. So let's get started with today's mini-sode unit idea deep dive, which is y'all.
Speaker 1:It's carnival season, which is my favorite season to be a romance language teacher. I used to teach Spanish and French and I had the best time ever with this because I taught French and Spanish. So I would have that beautiful transition that everybody hates of French one and then my second prep would be Spanish two. But one of the ways that I made this weird transition work and still had actually a lot of fun with it was connecting some of the cultural themes and ties that these two global languages have in common, which is the ever popular global celebration of Karnaval, which has so many ties between these two languages that we have so much that we could dive into with this, and it was also a really easy thing for me to do. That would reduce a lot of prep. For me, if you're in the same boat as me as both a multilingual teacher, but especially if you teach both Spanish and French. This celebration is equally as raucous in both Francophone and Hispanic Latina cultures, so you'll have a lot to work with and there's a lot of stuff that you can reuse between this time. So, if you've never done Carnaval, it's amazing to me that this celebration in particular, even though it's wildly popular across both of these cultures, that we don't actually spend a lot of time on it in the classroom, like not as much as you would hear about, like Dia de Muertos, for example, in Spanish class, which, of course, like yeah, we're going to give that its due time, but Carnaval is actually a huge missed opportunity, so we're doing a deep dive in it today. So let's get started with some ideas. First of all, if you've never worked with Carnaval before, here is the reason I love Carnaval.
Speaker 1:When I was a French major, we talked a lot about Carnival, through the lens, of course, of Maldigra, which is the Carnival celebration that we have here in the US, but also through the various Carnival celebrations that happen, like Carnival du Québec, or all of the Carnival celebrations that happen across Francophone Europe, like in Switzerland. Literally every country has one, anywhere that there's any kind of Catholic history. There is going to be a carnaval celebration because it's deeply tied to the history of colonization. Treasure trove of ways that you can talk about mixed culture and cultural interactions with carnaval, from the ways that it's celebrated in europe, from its origin, from its origins in that catholic culture of fat tuesday, all the way up through. How did this celebration become an expression of new world identity, with the way that it mixes indigenous cultures, african cultures, as well as repressed, enslaved cultures and the Catholic culture that was brought in from Europe at the time. So how are these things being melded together and in what ways were repressed peoples during the time of colonization using Carnaval to express themselves? Because that's really what Carnaval is about, at the heart of it. So there's so many things that you can do with this holiday. I would say that first, one of the things that you can explore is this idea of freedom of expression.
Speaker 1:Carnaval is one of the most enduring holidays that we have because it's hella fun. When I was studying abroad, in the Dominican Republic, this was a month-long celebration. It was every single weekend during Carnival season and it was huge. It took over the whole country and it is amazing to be a part of. So that was one of my first experiences like really seeing and living what a carnival country is like. But it also has to do with what are all of these ways that, through these celebrations that on the surface can look like this is just party, these are fun. All this, that and the other. They're actually very intense expressions of people's identity, people's culture and some things that they might not, at the time, have been allowed to say or express. And I'm going to share with you, at the end of this episode too, one of my favorite places to bring French students to study, carnaval, which is Mardi Gras. Of course, we're going to talk about Mardi Gras, but in Martinique there was a really interesting event that happened that brings through this modern expression of. This is how we show who we are. This is us as a people, and we're coming together to celebrate who we are as a people. In Martinique there was a specific event that happened during COVID that really brought this whole perspective to light. So it is a Carnaval is a beautiful way where you can take those easy to grasp on products and practices, like the things that happened during Carnaval the defile, the masks, the costumes, the celebrations, the month-long debauchery and wonderfulness that happens in the Dominican Republic.
Speaker 1:It's not just debauchery, of course, but there's it's all kinds of like fiestas and family celebrations too, but just the month-long atmosphere of party that happens. There is easy to talk about, but there's actually a lot going on under the surface. So let's get into some of the ways that you can do this tangibly in your class. I would say first, with carnaval, some of the things that you need to know about it is that it's going on right now. If you're listening or watching this episode, then Carnaval is currently occurring.
Speaker 1:It is one of those celebrations that is roughly around the time of quote-unquote fat Tuesday around the world. So you can look to Mardi Gras in our own country to see when that's going to be. But Carnaval is different in each country and region that celebrates it, so their Fat Tuesday usually is the jump off point. But there's many places like the. The DR does it for a whole month, the in Mardi Gras it's technically like a one weekend or one day celebration, but people who live in New Orleans know that it goes on for much longer than that and but there are official celebrations that happen on these specific days. Carnival de Barranquilla, right now, is going on through March 8th, so it's all about looking at what each country's different versions of celebrating Carnival can look like.
Speaker 1:If you're an Italian teacher, this is also a big thing. The Carnival in Venice and all throughout Italy is a whole big deal in here. So Carnival goes on for differing amounts of time, but it is about the same idea in most places. That has this central tying theme, which is that this is a time to feast, celebrate and get out all your excesses before you have to be real tied in and restrained during the spring season. So, with those dates in mind and what the whole celebration is about, you have a lot of options here.
Speaker 1:I used to do a big deep dive on this with my classes, because it's something that you can really go down a rabbit hole with your students on. Or you can also just show a couple clips from different places around the world and say, hey, this is what's going on right now. Let's focus in on this one area and do a group focus on one specific place, if you want to. So there's lots and lots of different ways that you can do this, but I would say one of the important things and themes to explore is, of course, what is the folklore that's being expressed in each city's regions, countries, different versions of Carnaval. What are the things that they are saying are?
Speaker 1:This is me, because that's one of the reasons I believe very strongly that Carnaval is a hugely important celebration. To emphasize is that it's so tied to what countries believe to be like. This is us, this is who we are, this is what we're about, which is a great way to showcase national identity, cultural identity, to your students. So I would say, look at that and see how many different ways can your students explore and dive into different expressions of identity within a specific culture through this celebration? There's also it's a nice, tangible way to look at it with carnaval, because people will make giant posters, they will make paper mache costumes, they will make all kinds of masks and different things that relate to what their area is, their city is their region and I would say, too, like very much the region. Like in haiti, every city has a different version of what they make for Carnaval, and so does the Dominican like. If you go to different cities during Carnaval, you will see different masks that represent different important aspects of that identity. It's kind of like I'm from the Philly area and it's like the mummers parade, which is also kind of part of that whole like idea of Carnaval, where in on January 1st every year in Philly we do a big mummers parade where each neighborhood has a different version and representation of what their mummer looks like. Another fun thing to deep dive.
Speaker 1:So let's get into some project ideas for what you can do for this. Something that I used to do for Carnaval is a student-led inquiry discovery type project, for Carnaval is a student-led inquiry discovery type project, a little bit like PBL, and if you do project-based learning, this is a great way to explore this. But I gave my students some loose parameters. Put them into groups that they could self-select or if your students are not, you know, in the self-selecting type, you can also make the groups for them. But I asked them hey, please select from this list a couple of countries. I gave them a list of what those countries were. These are some famous, easy to research popular carnival celebrations and like there were there's at least 12 for French, for Spanish and there's, you know, there's plenty for German, there's plenty for Italian as well, because for German and Italian, what you could do is what specific cities are doing and things like that. I would also say, too, that you have lots and lots of different options of what you want this, this project, to look like.
Speaker 1:I made it like a two-day thing where they had some time in the research library area to look up things on their own, and I asked for them to make some sort of final product with it, like make a PowerPoint with your group, make a Google Slides deal, make a poster, if you want. But what I'm looking for is answer these few questions for me. What is the folklore you see represented in this? You're going to have to explain that question, because they don't really know what folklore means. What are some of the things that you see are like a big part of national identity? And then the way that you can incorporate target language into this is ask them to describe when each celebration is, what dates are they, what times are the major events? What do you see in each picture of the major events? What do the major costumes look like and the major themes of things look like, and ask them to describe things in the target language If they're not at that point of describing things in the target language to that degree or depth. You can modify this to be all kinds of different things, but I would say, put some sort of target language emphasis on there.
Speaker 1:If you don't have a lot of time for a project, you also don't have to ask your students to get up in front of everybody and present or anything like that. Or if you're like me, and many times we're just looking for a last minute thing to do, what you can also do is do a simple picture talk to explore these different celebrations and places, these different celebrations and places, and I would say that with Carnaval it can be as simple as a 10 minute quick Google search of images for Carnaval in specific areas. I would keep it to like two or three specific places, unless you want to do like a big overview of what Carnaval is and put some of those pictures together in a super quick hey, these are 10 slides. You don't have to put anything else on there, no other language. If you only have 10 minutes, grab 10 pictures and just start talking with your students based on the pictures that you see. That's a really easy, quick, no prep way to do this. If you would like to do a more robust picture talk, then some of the things that you can do is find specific pictures where you're asking for students to look for more in-depth things, or you can also make sure that they have some language with them to help with the picture talk. But if you don't have any time to prep, you can do a picture talk without any prep, except for just finding a few pictures and write on the board, as you're talking, the phrases that you know your students will need. What are the things that you're saying? More than two or three times? Those are the ones you should put on the board.
Speaker 1:I would also say too, another idea for you for any of your lessons for this is Carnaval and any kind of Carnaval celebration, mardi Gras. All of that is because it's celebrated in so many places. It is comparison city and comparisons, comparing and contrasting and finding like, what do I have in common with this celebration? Or what does this carnival have in common with this other carnival that's across the world? You can ask for a lot of comparison language with this, as long as you help with scaffolding like Venn diagrams are beautiful for these kinds of things, but you can also do it as a class. If, especially, one of the follow-up activities I used to do is after student groups would take a deep dive into specific carnaval celebrations, I would ask them to get together with a group that studied another country or another city and say, like what, what was in common, what's the same, that kind of thing, and you would give them scaffolded structures like los dos tenemos, things like that. I would also say one of the best ways that you can do this is because this is such a varied celebration.
Speaker 1:You have so many different ways to explore this that this is a great opportunity to let students lead the conversation and let students students explore. You want to give them a few simple parameters like this is where carnaval is located. These are some of the bigger ones and these are some of the things to be looking for, but otherwise you can let the curiosity of the student group drive the conversation, because it's naturally interesting. There's so much there to work with. Like, there are many times in your class where you might have to talk about some things that are fun for you but are kind of stuffy, but this one, like this, is a global party. Y'all your kids will have so much fun talking about this and getting interested in this topic. This is definitely one of the highlights of my students here. They all loved talking about Cardinobol, and yours will too, if you let them lead the the curiosity side of this here. So a way that you could do this is simply just ask them, like what do they know about, kind of all, what do they know about Mardi Gras? And just let the conversation flow and you can pick up on where are the misconceptions about this? What's actually going on, and get into some of the other events.
Speaker 1:Another thing that you can do is dive into some short readings. There are short readings about a lot of these different events and places, and this is a great way that you could spice up some of the typical activities that you have to do, like oh, we got to get in some reading practice, we got to do some interpersonal. That kind of thing is. Make it about these specific events and holidays. Like, if you're doing Carnaval de Quebec, it's a great idea to find some authentic texts, some videos about it, because there's always tons of footage about Carnaval de Quebec and ask your students to just listen to it for a little bit and see what they can pick up from it. What are some things that they can write about it? You can do a write and discuss all kinds of things.
Speaker 1:I would say, too, that one of the major things that you could do which is really, really fun, especially with Mardi Gras if you're a French teacher is what can be a collaboration. What can you do with other departments around the school? It sounds like it's a lot of work, but it's actually a lot less work on your part If you do one simple meeting with somebody in the culinary department or the music department or the history department and you say yo, I'm doing a Mardi Gras project. One year I did it with middle schoolers where we did like a deep dive on jazz and the birthplace of jazz being New Orleans and all that. We did a collaborative piece with the music teacher at the elementary school and he taught the lesson. For me it was awesome because I was doing all this work, trying to research about jazz and things like that and finding them a good documentary but you know like kids don't want to sit for a documentary. That and finding them a good documentary, but you know like kids don't want to sit for a documentary. So it was actually a lot better, a lot more interesting and a lot more fun when you are able to bring in other experts from around the school to focus in on what is a piece of Carnaval. That would be really cool for students to experience from another teacher. So what are some ways that you can collaborate with them? The history department would always be down for it. I'm sure that you can find other departments in your school that would also be like very excited about the cool things in there.
Speaker 1:The culinary department was particularly excited during Mardi Gras when I was like do y'all want to make a galette des rois? Like there's all kinds of things that you can do With the art department. You can make masks, which again, that's like two days of prep. That's no longer on your plate. You just have to go down and meet with the art teacher during one of your preps and say, hey, do you have supplies for this? What do you think about putting something together where we can make a cross-collaborative thing going on here? It's awesome in that way. The next thing that you can do is keep in mind that you can always do a really small collaboration. You know you can always have something that is small scale and then bring it into. Hey, if we have more time next year, I'd love to do a bigger thing. That's always an option.
Speaker 1:Some language specific things that you can do with all of these ideas is can you do a virtual field trip? I have tons of those. I'm going to show you some examples of what a virtual field trip can look like if you're going through the lens of carnival. Can you do a map talk? A map talk is amazing. It is a skill taught by another comprehensible, input driven teacher, ben Tendley, and a map talk is a great way to explore what are the events of Carnival.
Speaker 1:Also, if you have multiple preps like every French teacher that I know and many Spanish teachers as well so if you're doing Spanish two, three and four, four and you want to do something that actually makes sense, where you have Carnival and Carnival in all its different forms throughout all of your classes, then what you can do is put a different spin or theme for each of your class. Maybe you do jazz with your level ones. Maybe you do food and celebration with your level twos level ones. Maybe you do food and celebration with your level twos. Maybe you do the, the visuals and the arts and everything that's visual land. That happens with carnaval with your level threes and have them explore some themes of like what is what is beauty, what is art, what is identity expressed through visual means, because they're your level threes and they'd be able to go a little bit deeper on that, things like that.
Speaker 1:I would also say, too, that a way that many teachers lean towards making this uh, doing celebrations and holidays more feasible is can you find some short and I emphasize the word short videos to make this really fun for your students to see, hear and experience and get more immersive into what a lot of these celebrations look like. However, something this fun, like this is literally a party. Something this fun should not be a 30-minute or a 60-minute documentary. This is not the time to do that. There are other times that you can do it, too, but I would say that with something that's this fun and this vibrant and this alive and active that a documentary is really going to like, put a damper on things, and your kids want to experience this, they want to absorb it, they want to be immersed in it. So there's a lot of other things that you can do that are far more tactile.
Speaker 1:The last thing that I would suggest to you is with Carnaval, keep it local and keep it interesting. With that I mean that there are so many different iterations of what these celebrations look like, and your students will have so much fun just by exploring the different ways that people express their identity through Carnaval, even in the same country, how different this can be and what different celebrations look like. So don't be afraid to dive in to different places, but also give your students a little bit of freedom to explore what these different areas are, because if you do just the hey, this is Carnaval. It's a global celebration, it's based off these areas and these ideas. It loses the sense of meaning, and you'll get a lot of the sense of meaning when you give them the chance to experience it from more firsthand accounts from specific areas and places.
Speaker 1:So, without further ado, I'm going to show you some ideas, and if you're listening, you can follow along too. I'll describe them for what some activities and ideas can look like for you during this outrageously fun season of Carnaval that we have. If you're looking for some ideas to help you get started with ways that you can do Carnaval in your class, I have for you some examples that you can check out, and there will be some links as well in the show notes below so that you can get these for yourself if you're looking for an easy way to do Carnaval. So this here that I have for you is a Mardi Gras reading with high frequency verbs. It's designed for French 1 and 2 and some of the things that you'll see in here is I have here the high frequency verbs that you need to emphasize a lot in French one which are based off of the super seven and in this reading passage, what I'm describing here are just the common things that you'll see around a Mardi Gras celebration in a way that's really accessible for students, with lots and lots of great pictures, and it also has all of these things that can be tough to do, like your glossary is ready to go.
Speaker 1:There's tons of pictures and with this reading too, it's very short. It's really really short because the focus is actually on the activities. There's a bunch of options that students have to do after they're done with the very short reading that describes, like, what the celebration is, what it's about, where it comes from and some cool things they'll see, hear and be all about and what they'll like about Mardi Gras. There's a postcard that they'll be asked to write some of the things like what are the things that you see or hear about Mardi Gras? They can design a mask using the colors and the symbols, and there's also a ghetto de roi activity where they have to make a ghetto and design it and tell us a little bit about it and what's going on. Here is a writing activity that they have to do, and my favorite part here is doing a storyboard. So in this one here you have a storyboard that you can do, where you can read this story to students, and it's just about two kids who go to a Mardi Gras des Filets and they have the story and then they get to draw out what's happening in the story to indicate their understanding of it, and they can also even write their own or just draw as well another. So this is a way that you can that might be helping you to get some activities for what you can do during this mardi gras season.
Speaker 1:A bunch of great activities. I mean, of course you're going to have the class party, but there here are some ways that you can really bring in the language to it too. If you're focusing on Côte-Nouvelle-du-Québec, there's a virtual field trip here for you that might give you some ideas, too, on how you can explore this through pictures and how it really makes the whole celebration come to life and be more immersive. In this virtual field trip, I have here for you lots and lots of pictures, as well as links to some of the best authentic texts that I've found about Calneval de Quebec, but it also dives deeply into what are some of the other aspects of culture in Quebec that they can also branch into. It's a very open-ended resource where they get to choose which links they want to explore, based on the description or based on the things that you want them to see specifically, but there's over 40 links in here, so they have a lot of things that they can choose between, and it also has a focus on indigenous identity and contributions to Calneval de Quebec all of the things that students may not know about some of the origins of some of their favorite celebrations, as well as a lot of celebrations of indigenous culture in this here, and it also has for you different ways that you could focus your Carnaval de Quebec celebrations and language if you wanted to focus on the events and activities that are in here. There's also a lot of stuff in here specifically about Carnaval de Quebec that might be really helpful around singing specifically in here. As well as all of the athlete stuff, there's a lot of stuff in here about sports and what happens during Cal Nouvelle de Quebec, because it is also a big sport event and an athletic thing. So that is one of the ways, too, that you can bring in target language into here. This is one of the benefits of diving deeply into a specific celebration for Cal Nouvelle is that you'll be able to make the target language much more specific and interesting.
Speaker 1:This is Martinique, and diving into Martinique during the season of Cal Naval. I love this one in particular because Martinique is a small island that has a lot going on, so there's a lot for your students to explore and for them to absorb, and it's also very accessible in terms of the fact that there's Maltenique has a very visually striking and unique Calnaval celebration that you can find a lot of information about. There's also, especially, all kinds of things with the celebration that emphasizes what we were talking about at the beginning of this episode that Carnival really is an expression of a country's identity. So one of the things that this is focused on is that during COVID, when a lot of other Carnival celebrations were shut down and people were told not to go outside of their houses, this is one of the countries that decided to ignore that rule and go ahead and celebrate anyways. And there's a whole focus on this, on this celebration of why people chose to celebrate carnaval anyway and why they felt that it was important to do so and why it's an important part of their cultural expression. Here it also gets into the Anscafau Slave Memorial, which is enslaved culture is an important piece of Calnaval, so it's a great way to bring in the multi-layered identity of the places that you're talking about in one celebration. It is completely jam-packed.
Speaker 1:What I'm looking at here too, if you're listening to this, is this Calneval virtual field trip has a lot of vibrant pictures, and you can tell already that there's definitely a color theme with Martinique. They celebrate their Carnival all in red. There are specific colors that go with it, and there's also in all of these pictures. These are all pictures of real people from Martinique, so your students will get an idea, too, of what does the country look like, what's going on there and what are some of the places, common themes and scenes that they will see. And the last one I want to show you is my favorite one, which is the carnival that I actually got to attend. So this is a virtual field trip to explore the Dominican Republic, and there's so much information about carnival for the Dominican Republic you can literally even you can watch each carnival celebration celebration. They always film it and do a huge hurrah around it, so you can even put on in the background what's going on with each of these big celebrations and just put it in the background while students are looking up other things.
Speaker 1:The masks are incredibly varied and beautiful. People spend all year making their Carnaval masks and they are a true work of art. So there's all kinds of beautiful things that you can dive into and get into. And there's, of course, all these interesting traditions with Carnaval that come with it, and each that's my city, that's Santiago. So there's a lot of different ways that you can explore and see how national identity is expressed, and also regional in here. You'll see a lot of different ways that you can explore and see how national identity is expressed and also regional in here. You'll see a lot of interesting things going on in here.
Speaker 1:So I hope that this gives you some ideas for how you can make Carnaval really come to life for your students in different ways, that it will feel like you can talk more easily and allow students to explore and compare more easily those things that are the most important for us to discuss in a world language class, which is these are the products of a culture, these are the practices of a culture like carnaval.
Speaker 1:So what are, how do they represent the perspectives of that culture? And Carnaval is a really great entry point to do that. I hope this gives you lots and lots of ideas that you can do this in a really low prep way. If you're listening to this right on your way to school and you're like I want to do this today, you've got some options. Or if you want to do a bigger project, you also have some starting off and jumping points for that as well. Thanks so much for being here for this podcast, for my favorite celebration of the year to be a French and Spanish teacher, and I will see you on the next Deep Dive, minnesota. Bye for now.