RUE Episode 100: Al Norte - Ramp Up your English

Celebration!

Welcome to Ramping Up your English. We’re celebrating our 100th episode! Launched back in 2015, Ramping Up your English exists to help intermediate-level English Learners improve their proficiency to higher levels. Not counting our numerous Bonus Episodes, this marks 100 episodes since our beginning on RVTV Voices. I have no way of counting all the people who have used our content-based approach to reach higher levels of English Proficiency.

Watching Episode 100

You can watch Episode 100 of Ramping Up your English as free Video on Demand. The link below will take you to Archive.org, where all Ramping Up your English episodes are accessible. You can also download the episode from the archive site. Click here to access Episode 100. If you have trouble playing the episode. Click here to watch it on my You Tube channel. There may be adds on You Tube.

Episode Summary

In the teaching profession, we call this “chunking.” This episode is all about content; hence a long video clip that advances the viewer’s content knowledge for future language work. As our theme has been Native Americans, this episode continues the effects on Native Americans of Europeans. This episode focuses on those from Spain, sending deadly expeditions north from Mexico into the North. That’s where we get the title “Al Norte” the Spanish language words for “…to the north.”

In this episode, we emphasize the effects of the expeditions of Hernando DeSoto in the Southeast and Fransisco Coronado in the Southwest. Both were in what’s now the southern United States at the same time, but neither contacted the other. Both expeditions exacted a terrible price from Native Americans who encountered them.

The Pueblo People lived in the American Southwest for thousands of years.

Fransisco Coronado invades the American Southwest with a horde of Spanish soldiers and Native Americans from the south. He came looking for gold and went home empty-handed, but not before killing hundreds if not thousands of the people living there.

The Grand Canyon! The Colorado River was within reach of Coronado’s expedition, but his supplies were far downstream.

Spanish presence in the American Southwest had a tragic effect on Native Americans living there.

Both De Soto and Coronado saw American Bison for the first time as Europeans.

Language Objectives

The main focus here is listening comprehension. While no specific instruction occurred, this is a good opportunity to informally assess your comprehension. How much of the video did you understand? Give yourself a percentage score. That would be 100% if you understood the whole video. You would score 50% if you understood about half.

Academic Content Objectives

For U.S. History, this episode is a major milestone. The expeditions of the Spaniards resulted in strong claims on this part of the country. Settlement also followed.

The Expeditions of De Soto and Coronado had lasting effects on the Native Americans in those regions. Here are a few learning objectives:

Name the major Spanish expeditions to the areas North of present-day Mexico.

Explain how the emergence of Cabeza de Vaca and other survivors encouraged further expeditions of the North American continent.

List the main motivations for the De Soto and Coronado expeditions.

Explain how expeditions into “new lands” were financed.

Connect cause and effect between the presence of Spaniards and the lives of Native Americans who encountered them.

Characterize the treatment of Native Americans by the Desoto and Coronado expeditions

Give examples of actions by Spanish explorers and how they affected Native Americans.

Locate the general routes of De Soto’s expedition and the Native American Communities they encountered on a map.

Locate the general routes of Coronado’s expedition and the Native American communities they encountered on a map.

Characterize the damage suffered by Native Americans in the aftermath of the Spanish expeditions into North America north of Mexico.

Videos Used in this Episode

We only use one video in this Episode, and it fills almost all of the time we have for Episode 100. Click here to watch the video entitled Al Norte. If you have trouble watching the video on archive.org, click here to watch the same video on my You Tube channel. There may be ads.

Links to Outside Videos

Ramp up that listening comprehension even more by watching and listening to videos about the theme of Native Americans. Click here to watch a video about Acoma Buffalo Dancers.

Acknowledgements

Many of the images featured in this episode are found at the Library of Congress digital collections and through wikipedia. Some video content is from Storyblocks via subscription.

Next Episode

Episode 101: Al Sur is ready. Click here to go to the Episode 101 page.