El pronosticando pulpo

Sarah Rosenbaum

       El pronosticando pulpo lived in an aquarium in Miami. El pronosticando pulpo understood English better than she understood Spanish, but since she lived in Miami she heard a lot of Spanish. For a long time she struggled to figure out what people were saying in Spanish, but eventually she figured out a strategy. She would look at body language, who the person was talking to and where the person was standing (in front of which animal). She found that recording a prediction or guess about what the person was talking about helped her to understand what the person was saying. She would always go back to her prediction, which she recorded in the sand in her tank, to see whether her prediction matched what the person actually said. The more she used the strategy the more accurate her predictions.

One day, el pronosticando pulpo broke out of his home at the aquarium to explore the world outside. El pronosticando pulpo was bored of listening to the Spanish she heard at the aquarium. She was so good at using body language, context (who the person was talking to) and the location of the person (what tank the person was looking at) that she now knew almost all the Spanish words for the animals around her in the aquarium. El pronosticando pulpo left the aquarium and headed straight for la biblioteca (a word she had learned means library by predicting). At the library, she was able to use all her tentacles to grab books, read the cover and then write down predictions for what was going to happen in each book. She had become such an expert at predicting that she could read whole books in Spanish by using the title, pictures, and other context clues to predict what would happen. She found that writing her predictions down ahead of time made it even easier to read. Although she did not know all the words in the books she read she could understand the plot.

Lesson Application:

El pronosticando pulpo can now be checked out from her tank at the library to make classroom appearances. Teachers use el pronosticando pulpo and all her helpful prediction techniques for world language lessons involving reading, summarizing, and listening comprehension. All of the students who have met el pronosticando pulpo have found that writing down their predictions before reading helps them to understand even the most complex passages in Spanish. After reading students will summarize what they have read so that they can compare their predictions to their understanding of the passage after they have read.

Editorial Note:

Some experts have compared to Ursula from The Little Mermaid. Ursula used her friends as spies and Although Ursula tried to predict the future by analyzing Ariel’s desires, she was not successful in the end because she used her powers for evil.