This beginning Spanish short story provides novice learners with engaging reading comprehension practice through comprehensible input. The ready-to-use CI lesson includes a printable story, two animated video versions, comprehension activities, a story-retell worksheet, and an answer key. Repeated target structures and visual support help students understand the Spanish while saving you preparation time.

El Mal Chef is bad—really bad. He puts too much salt on everything. His customers are angry, and he is unhappy. Is there a simple solution to his problem?

Students encounter four target structures repeatedly throughout the story:

• un mal chef — a bad chef

• pone — he/she puts

• demasiada sal — too much salt

• eres — you are

READ, WATCH, DISCUSS, AND RETELL

Present the story in several different ways:

• Read the printable PDF version

• Watch the animated video with Spanish text

• Pause the video to discuss, circle target structures, or storyask

• Watch the illustration-only version and have students retell the story

• Complete the reading-comprehension activities

• Create a parallel story with new details

The video with text is just over five minutes long and includes pause time for students to read. The second animated version uses the illustrations without written text, making it useful for oral retelling, sequencing, and comprehension checks.

DIFFERENTIATE BY PROFICIENCY

With novice-low and novice-mid learners, present the story as written and use the repeated structures and visual support to build comprehension.

With novice-high learners, add details, write a parallel story, or ask students to retell the events more independently.

At higher levels, students can expand the story or retell it in the past tense.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

• Links to animated video versions with and without text

• Printable PDF version of El Mal Chef

• Comprehension-question worksheet

• “Who Said It?” worksheet

• Story-retell worksheet

• Answer key

USE THIS RESOURCE FOR

• Beginning Spanish reading comprehension

• Spanish comprehensible input

• CI reading practice

• Novice Spanish stories

• Food and restaurant vocabulary

• Storyasking and circling

• Listening comprehension

• Story sequencing and retelling

• A ready-to-use Spanish lesson

This Spanish CI lesson gives beginning students a humorous, accessible story with repeated language, visual support, and meaningful follow-up activities in one convenient resource.

Click HERE to join my mailing list and get a free article about adapting a textbook to CI!