Activity for Spanish 101
Maria Fellie
Topic: Frida Kahlo
(connected to the cultural section for Mexico in the 101 textbook, chapter 2)
Elements: ser + adjectives, estar + adjectives, family vocabulary, possibly colors
Homework the previous night: To look up some of Kahlo’s paintings and come up with
descriptive words that relate to them.
Materials: PowerPoint presentation with a few facts and dates and lots of paintings.
Activity:
1) Briefly introduce Frida Kahlo, her life and art, using the PowerPoint presentation as a
guide. This activity can be used within the first month of Spanish 101, so the
explanations must be simple and have a lot of cognates.
2) Show photographs of Frida and Diego; ask ¿Cómo es? y ¿Cómo está? for each.
3) First painting: “Mis abuelos, mis padres y yo” (1936); use family vocabulary.
4) Continue with various other paintings, mainly her self-portraits, and ask the students
to describe Friday (¿Cómo es?, ¿cómo está?, y ¿cómo es la pintura?)
(15-25 minutes)
- I had given them the words “artista,” “pintura,” and “autorretrato” the day before.
- Many of them had looked up extra words to describe the paintings they had reviewed
for homework the night before (like “oscuro,” etc.).
- Only two or three out of nineteen students had even heard of Frida Kahlo. I think this
activity worked well because her paintings and life story are so different from what they
may have seen before (violent, controversial, etc.). They seemed to have strong feelings
about several of the paintings.