Boletín 97 - The Democratic Memory Law, tragedy in Melilla and Generation Z.

Lifeless bodies, rubber bullets, asylum claims denied, repeated beatings on camera, illegal push backs, quick burials and many unaccounted for.

The BBC shared a very enlightening investigative long-read last week and followed it up with a 27-minute documentary named Death on the Border recounting the events of 24th June in Melilla where at least 24 immigrants died. New video evidence has come to light raising doubts about the official report.

Edition 97 contains one text on the above but if you haven’t already seen the documentary and you’re teaching the immigration topic then it is well worth a watch! There are some quite distressing images throughout though so you have been warned.

The remaining twos texts are about the Democratic Memory Law and smartphone usage by Generation Z.

Source text one about the Democratic Memory Law.

Source text two about the tragedy in Melilla.

Source text three about smartphone usage by Generation Z.

Grammar to look out for:

• Past participles used as adjectives

• The gerund

• The future simple tense

• Avoiding the passive se structure

• Apocopated adjectives

• The passive voice

• The preterite tense

• The present tense (both regular and irregular forms)

• The present and past perfect

• Direct Object Pronouns

Reminder: There is a Quizlet set available here with 571 vocabulary items from past editions.

Quite unrelated to this edition but potentially useful for anybody teaching dictatorships or Francoism will be the special illustrated edition 93 on The Spanish Civil War. Last week, what I intended to be a 20-minute introduction to the topic lasted the whole hour and could have lasted a lot longer. So, what did we do? I simply printed out edition 93 and year 13 actively read, highlighter in hand, and I asked them what questions they had? We then had a mature discussion about politics and war with no question being stupid. I feel like the contextual groundwork has now been laid!

Lastly, a big thank you to everybody who reported the TES user who re-uploaded Boletín last week. TES have now removed all their resources which I am pleased about. I’m still mildly insulted that the user priced Boletín at a measly £1!

Thanks as ever to @thais_mfl for the proofread on edition 97.

Download edition 97 here.

Ollie