If you’re a lover of Gran Hotel and you’re teaching the telenovela this year in your upper level classes, you must start the year with a Tea Party! I learned about Tea Parties from my dear friend Rita Barrett who graciously wrote this guest post to introduce you to the fun. Rita uses Tea Parties before beginning a new novel to introduce her students to the characters and build excitement and buy in before they even open the first page….check out her post with instructions for creating a Tea Party to use with any novel, show or movie.

I thought this would be the perfect way to introduce my Spanish 4 Little Darlings to the characters and scandals of Gran Hotel, while I’m waiting for their parent permission letters to come in. (Although Gran Hotel is pretty mild as far as novelas go, I am not taking any chances. I love Gran Hotel but I love my job more!)

Here’s everything you need to hold a Gran Hotel Tea Party (and if you teach another Telenovela, feel free to make a copy of everything and edit for different characters and scandals!)

Pre game- before the Tea Party Starts:

First introduce the activity with this slideshow:

Since I’m doing this with my Spanish 4s, we’ll try to be aware of Tú and Usted. (In lower levels, just simplify everything with Tú!) On everyone’s name tag, there will be a + indicating if that person should be addressed as “Usted” a – indicating “Tú” and +/- indicating that it will depend on who is addressing them. This is the second slide of the slideshow, to facilitate the Tú/ Usted conversation:

Now it’s time to assign characters! Print the Character Name Tags out back to back (So one side has their biography and the other has their name, their gender and how to address that character.) I ordered some name badges to use for this activity, but you could also print them out on cardstock and use a hole punch and some yarn. I want them to wear their name tag during the Tea Party so their name is visible, but their bio is handy if they need to check some facts.

Everyone needs a character and if you have more than 11 students, there will be repeated characters. Don’t stress, this is actually a good thing! Everyone is a character but it’s totally OK if you have 3 Alicias, for example.

After everyone has their “nueva identitdad” instruct all the Julios to form a small group, all the Beléns to join together and so on. Have them read together their biography. Since I’ve included some words that may be unfamiliar to my new Little Darlings, I made up a glossary and I’ll give everyone a copy, to help them understand their own bio AND to understand what their classmates tell them. I will encourage them to hold their glossary during the party and point to a word that might be unfamiliar to the person he is talking to (point and pause style, like we do!).

Additionally, everyone will need an Interview Notes Sheet, where they will keep track of all they’ve learned while they chat with the different characters. Before the party begins, they will fill in the info they’ve learned about their character, working together their small group.

Let the party begin:

Students get up, mingle around and chat with the other characters. While they’re chatting, they’re adding the info they’re learning onto their Interview Notes Sheet and they’re learning new information about their own character, which they jot down as well. The bios are like puzzle pieces, as they talk to others, they will get information about their own character as well as others.

I’ll have this slide projected to give them some conversation scaffolding as they’re chatting during the Tea Party:

As Rita mentions in her post, it’s fun to offer tea and cookies during the party…but I will not. I am going to do this the very first week of school and I think that sets a dangerous precedent for the rest of the year! I don’t want them just expecting treats all year!

This year my Spanish 4s will come to class every day for 50 minutes (All the other periods are 90 minute blocks that come every other day, but we have one “skinny” period that we see each day. This year that just so happens to be my Spanish 4s) and I expect it will take a few class periods to introduce the activity and give them time to chat with all the characters.

Also, I have 36 Spanish 4 students enrolled and only 32 seats, so I’m going to be really strict about “Spanish Only” during the Tea Party. Students who need to be continually reminded to use Spanish will be encouraged to seek another class. I don’t generally want students to switch out of class, but desperate times, desperate measures!!

After they’ve had a chance to chat with each character, they’ll join their original group (All the Julios together, all the Alicias together) to compare notes. Together they’ll create a web (on the back of their Interview Notes Sheet), showing how the characters are connected to each other.

The lastly, because you know I love games, they’ll use everything they’ve learned to match the character photos to names:

In case all those links and files above complicated, here’s the whole kit and kaboodle all together, because I love you:

Gran Hotel Tea Party Resources

Wishing you a great start to the school year! If you’re looking for other Back to School posts, here’s a handful I’ve written over the years. Here’s to our best year yet!