Last year, I started to look for a new series to show my Spanish 4 students. I was looking for something that came from Latin America since there is a Spanish series shown in Spanish 5. After trying out a few different ones, I found Netflix’s Cielo grande, also known as Secrets of Summer in English. The series takes place at a struggling Argentinian hotel that the characters are working hard to keep from closing. To bring in more income they’ve reinstated their summer wakeboarding competition and are reopening their karaoke bar. One of the wakeboarders coming to compete is also there searching for secrets about her past. The first season’s plot moves relatively slowly during the 11 episodes, which makes it easy to follow. The series also has tons of linguist and racial diversity, most of the characters are Argentinian, but there are also Mexican and Spanish Spanish-speakers, as well as Brazilian and Italian actors speaking in Spanish. And what really sold me is that the series is clean and fun.
I decided to show my students some episodes last spring and see what they thought. I wasn’t sure how they would react to the musical numbers or wakeboarding scenes, but I framed those scenes as a mental break from listening to dialogue between characters. The response I got from my students was overwhelmingly positive and many were disappointed we wouldn’t have enough time to finish the season in class.
When this school year started, I decided to put the first season into my unit focused on personal relationships and the subjunctive. The series provided tons of contextualized material for us to practice vocabulary and use subjunctive. I showed one episode a week and created episode questions that reinforced the plot and our unit vocabulary. We also spent lots of time talking about the series and characters, which was an excellent way to improve their conversation skills and use subjunctive in context. We had all agreed early on that the series is very fun and a little silly, so many of my students had lots of opinions to share and predictions to make. Also since the series highlights Argentinian Spanish, I had a great contextualized entry point to talk about the vos and the rioplatense dialect.
An unforeseen benefit to using a more recent series is that there is tons of content out there! Netflix did a series of promotional videos, there are cast interviews, articles, reviews and all of the actors are on social media – all of which are authentic resources! They also released a second season in December, which my students are already asking to watch.
You can find my Cielo grande products in my Teachers Pay Teacher store, including a free sample of my season 1 episode 1 questions.
