This was a great purchase. It has been displayed among my new FVR books for the last week and has already developed a fan base among my Spanish 3 students, including one reluctant reader who I worried I would never reach. Glancing through their quick writes about their independent reading I was surprised to see that he has been flying through the book, and loves it. Several students were familiar with the original English version from their middle school reading experiences, but this seems to be a plus in that it aids in making the book comprehensible. Nonetheless, for level three students, this book already is comprehensible enough and even students who were unfamiliar with the English version have expressed interest. Take a look at the example page below to get a sense of whether this might be a good purchase for your classroom FVR library:
Mike, I am very new to this whole world and plan to attend a workshop as soon as possible but in the meantime, what are your recommendations for how to start an FVR program?
Jenny,
How to start a brand new FVR program: that is exactly what I have been working on lately! Hopefully sometime later this week or at latest next weekend I will roll out my newest initiative, which includes a stellar idea for obtaining the lowest level easy reading material that language learners need, especially those that are not used to the idea of “pleasure reading” in Spanish.
In the meantime here are a couple of blog posts that will help you:
https://mrpeto.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/a-map-to-transitioning-your-class-to-fvr/
and here is a link to the presentation that I gave at NTPRS in 2015:
https://mrpeto.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/ntprs-2015-my-presentation-on-fvr/
In case you are near any of these venues: I will be presenting at CFFLT (Colorado) in late February, on the first weekend of March I will be giving a whole day presentation in Portland on FVR and use of telenovelas in the WL classroom, and then in the last week of June I will present three times at the Comprehensible Cascadia Conference (also in Portland) on FVR, telenovelas and either heritage learners or AP.
Mike