On December 14 and January 11 five sections of Spanish classes learned a bit about the sport of balonmano (team handball) from Jesus Arlaban, a former coach of the sport who lives in Iowa. Jesus also happens to be my husband which is why he gets "roped into" helping with all sorts of activities (seen and unseen) in my classroom.
Team handball is a combination of soccer, basketball, and waterpolo so to speak. We played in our school gym with what equipment I could round up. The balls were not really the right ones, we did not have a net so we had to imagine where it would be, and we invented some crazy rules to fit various classes. In the two largest ones, each time a boy touched the ball he had to pass off to a girl; I wanted to make sure that everyone was included in the "scrimmages" and not just the super-competative boys. Jesus taught the students some warm-up exercises in Spanish to get them moving and used to dealing with the ball and some of the rules (you can take three steps in balonmano before being called for traveling). My students did get used to the commands for throw, pass, etc. by the end of the period.
Every Friday they now want to play balonmano. I think perhaps this day was the most that some of them had moved in the gym--- ever.
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