Pronunciation challenges

Pronunciation in your classroom

Last week, while browsing a Facebook group filled with fabulous language teachers, the topic of pronunciation and teaching the alphabet was brought up. One teacher wanted new ideas for reviewing the alphabet with her students. I loved reading all the different ways in which we are all engaging our students differently in order to get to the same goal: proficiency!

The thread became a phenomenal list of activities that inspired me. I had been wanting to create some task cards with challenging words for my students and this conversation gave me the push I needed.

So, let me share with you a list of some of the activities that you can use in your classroom as well as my pronunciation task cards.

Activity 1: Teléfono roto.
An oldie but a goodie. Get your students in small groups and hand student 1 a card. Let them spell it to student 2, and 2 spells it to 3 and so on. The last student has to spell it out loud or write it on a piece of paper. They all compare it to the original. Round 2 changes who student 1 is so everyone gets a chance to be at different stages of the line.


Activity 2: Yo tengo. ¿Quién tiene? Create multiple copies of this set of words. Give each student 2 cards. They can pick one that they have and one they are searching for.  Students roam the classroom sharing with others (by spelling) the word they have and the one they need.

Activity 3: Around the world.  My students have enjoyed this one with different topics. Most say that being in the spotlight is a great challenge and makes them work harder. Student 1 and student 2 stand by each other. Word is given. Both get a chance to spell it. Whoever does it correctly moves on to challenge student 3. The student who can be the last one standing is the winner. Second winner can be the student with the higher winning streak. As a way to engage all the students who are no longer in the running to win, have them spell them out on a piece of paper and award them something if they can get the rest of the words right!

Activity 4: Spelling bee contest.  Make it a contest, pick a reward, and have some fun! For students who start losing, ask them to create small groups where they can all practice writing out the word that is given in the challenge and serve as helping judges.

Activity 5: Hot potato.  My beachballs are always a hit. Make a circle, say the word aloud and have students spell while passing the ball. Student who says something incorrectly is out. Start a "losers" bracket / second group and that way everyone continues to be
challenged.
Activity 6: Quiz, quiz, trade. Students roam the room and find a partner. They quiz them by saying their card aloud. Student 2 then spells it out. Then student 2 quizzes student 1 with their card. After they are done (quiz, quiz), they trade and move on to find new partners! Perfect bell ringer!

Activity 7: Matamoscas.  have the words written on your board, or use these cards to display on your smart board or make copies to put on board. Have a second set to give around to students. Select random students to come up to the board and select one of the students on their seats to slowly start spelling out the word on the card they have. The students standing by the board need to hit the correct word being spelled out in order to win.

Activity 8: Relay races.  Divide students into smaller groups. Student 1 says word from card to student 2. Student 2 must spell it aloud correctly. Then student 2 then pronounces his card to student 3. Student 3 spells and so on. Team that complete this task in the least amount of time is the winner!

      

Our first día de los muertos

Our first día de los muertos

Last year, my kids lost their beloved great gpa on Halloween. He was the first person in their lives to leave them, and he definitely left a huge hole in their hearts. That October, Coco also came out in and a few months later we had the DVD and watched it at home.

We are a Colombian family, so día de los muertos  is not something I grew up celebrating. In fact, there is not a lot that I know about that celebration. But watching the movie with my kids started some very interesting conversations between us. While I am not claiming that the movie is 100% accurate or truly representative of the real traditions, it made my kids think about those who have left us and gave them an idea on how to remember them. I have also read some articles that show support for the representations shown in the movie.

So, for the next year they kept looking for ideas on how to decorate their altar. My parents went on a trip to Guanajuato, Mexico and brought them traditional items. We also found some additional items while shopping around our local stores. They were determined to replicate the altars they saw in the movie. They spoke with their Titos (their Colombian grandparents) about the idea, and decided to include some extra people in their altar.

Long story short, my kid's need to connect with their beloved grandfather made me research more about the day itself. So, I have found these amazing resources that I would like to share with you as well.

I hope that you can use this in your classroom or at home. 

**Please leave a comment if you have any other resources that I could add to this blog**

Facts about the celebration. 
1. Download these cards and talk to your students about the holiday.
2.  Watch this short film that shows a young girl experiencing the celebration and understanding its meaning better.
3. Here is National Geographic's things to know about this day.

Celebrations around the world. 
1. Celebrating the day in Mexico. Read more about it here.
2. Carolina, from Fun for Spanish teachers, shares how Guatemala celebrates this day. Read more here.
3. Julie, from El Mundo de Pepita, shares Ecuador's celebration. Learn more about it here.
4. Take your students around the world. Show them these ten places. As a follow up, they could investigate further these locations, or they could find new ones to add to the list.

Crafts for the classroom.
1. Coloring calaveras and alebrijes can be an appropriate activity for your students once they understand why they are doing it. You could even build an altar in your room with their examples and ask them to color one to honor someone they miss. Check out these incredible free coloring pages.


Culture through food
1. Laura, from el Tarro de los Idiomas, shares a recipe for pan de muerto!  Great way to engage your students and perhaps add to your altar. Recipe found here.

Remembering their loved ones. 
In order to help my kids better connect to their grand father and this celebration itself, I asked them to write down things they remembered about him. We used this resource to do it and added it to our altar.

I hope that you have found this list helpful and that your students can better understand this incredible celebration of life. I know my kids and I had a great time.

Our first altar did not disappoint! Kids help me set it up and they wrote their thoughts on grandpa. They were very excited to continue to learn about this tradition and improve our altar for next year.
       
         


Thanks  Prettygrafik for the clipart

It's a birthday celebration

Hola a todos! Hello everyone!

It is my birthday week and I want to share it with you. 

Starting tomorrow, and until Friday 21st, my ENTIRE store will be 20% off!

So stop by La tienda de Señora 

and celebrate with me. 

Las vacaciones y la comida!

Today is the last day of a multi "unit" research project -- I know, I know... we are still using textbooks. That's a story for another day.  However, you TOO can make lemonade from whatever lemons you get ;D

I love sending my students on vacation! So, at the start of the trimester I give them a country and from that day forth, this country is their new identity.

First we incorporated our countries in our clothing unit. We first started with simple clothing activities to get us all on the same page, and later students worked with describing traditional clothing items from their countries. I have the basic clothing resource here.

We then moved on to ser vs. estar and I quickly realized we needed a lesson in geography! So we shared in groups the location of our countries in the map. Estar + prepositions of location!! This activity was fun and we did many information gap activities! This was followed by a little research to find information about their countries itself. So we were able to describe our countries a bit better based on their geography, eco-turism, weather, etc. I used this activity to give them examples about what they could do with their own country.

My next unit was the house! Boy I loved this unit!!! First we started with the basics and I used this fabulous resource by Fun For Spanish Teachers. We labelled rooms, we described them, we placed them inside the house! It was just awesome. Then, we looked at what typical homes in our countries looked like and shared that with friends. We drew rooms and partnered with others to see if they could draw our descriptions; we created dream homes. Lots of different ways to talk about homes; worked with these task cards. The possibilities are endless!


But, who lives in the house? The family! Our family unit was a lot of fun because it incorporates the comparatives and superlatives "grammar". We learned our family basics and then compared them to others within our family and to our classmate's families. This gave us a chance to review our adjectives. We shared a lot with each other  by comparing our family members. We found similarities and differences. We also worked on reporting back on the information that we had gathered.

A family is a unit that helps each other, so what better way than to learn some of the household chores that allow us to do things around the house! This is how I tied in the unit on informal affirmative commands! Fun games of "Simon dice" to introduce our topic led us into create "chore lists" and ways in which we can all help get ready for a fabulous fiesta!

Our home was ready, the guest list was finalized, decorations were purchased, and now it was time to eat! and we were VERY hungry !!! We came full circle! Looked up traditional dishes form our countries, described them and created recipe cards. Then, students prepared these fabulous dishes and brought them to share. What a fabulous time we had trying multiple dishes sharing our likes and dislikes.  Check out today's "menu".
  

I hope you have enjoyed this "unit" and hopefully you can find ways to break away from your textbook and take your students in a wonderful adventure!

La ropa

¿Qué llevas?

It is time to get dressed and have some fun!

My students were asked to design outfits for their new friends. Then depending on their level, we did different activities. 

In the past I worked with K-8 and and this is how we approached this topic:

K-3rd?: For each grade level I had designed an appropriate list of vocab words that I know they were able to grasp. We used lots of movement to "put" those items on. In some classes, the students even brought extra clothes to dress up and play some serious rounds of "Simon dice"!

3rd-8th: The older grades were able to talk more about them. So for example they would give them new names, ages, nationalities. They would present their "new" friend to the class. My older groups would also venture into descriptions of the clothing items, tell us where they shop for this items and what their favorite things were. They also partnered up and expressed what items they liked or disliked from the outfit of their partner's new friend. We had a great time!

Currently, I work with high schoolers... this is how we worked this same activity. 

High school: My high school students did the same steps as the younger ones but you can always take it a bit further. Currently we are working with pronouns after prepositions as well as stem changing verbs. So, I tried to tie it up together and created some conversation cards that they were able to use in small groups. We did our basic introductions for the "new" friend and then we incorporated weather and seasons and described what we wear in each season. 

       

We also worked with descriptions and adjective agreement by using colors and textures as adjectives. In order to keep "old" material fresh, we also went shopping. Images of clothing items were posted around the room with different price tags. They were each given a budget and asked to shop around. Then we gathered and volunteers could share what they purchased.

For homework, students had to address the different conversation cards in writing so we could focus on form and spelling. 

Overall the students in all grade levels were very responsible to the activity and enjoyed creating their own materials.

One fun game that you can create after students have present their friends, is a game of guess who. You can draw 5 random ones and display them on the board. Then read aloud some clues about those cards and have the students guess which friend those clues refer to. They can play individually or in small teams. Get ready for some intense competition =D

You can download the whole pack here. It will include the pronoun after preposition lesson; the characters to color; the conversation cards (12total) and the answer sheet. 

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Tic tac toe

Tres en línea

Games have always helped me engage students and hold them accountable to review the material at home. Tic tac toe, or tres en línea, is a lovable classic that can be adapted to any topic! Set up time is minimal so you get to start playing right away!
**Download the templates here**


K-8: A few years ago when I taught K-8, my first graders had a wonderful time getting to play a classic, while adding a Spanish twist to it!  They were learning some basic descriptions using ser + adjectives. So for example, I asked those who were Xs, ¿Cómo te llamas? What is your name? and before they could have a turn they had to answer "Me llamo ____". My name is _____. 

Other rounds required students to look at a card that showed pictures of vocabulary words we have used and tell me what they were in Spanish.

At the end, students were asked harder questions. They had to create descriptions. So when a green card with a purple #3 was shown, students would tell me "El tres es morado y verde", The #3 is green and purple.

We had a great time and it was fun to see them so excited about the game but also about answering correctly!

High school:  Think your high schoolers are too old for this game? Think again!  This week, my high schoolers needed to review the regular preterit from last trimester in order to get started incorporating some irregular preterit verbs into our conversations.

I brought the game out and they loved it!  Out theme for this unit was vacations and traveling. So, I would ask them a question like "¿Qué hiciste en tus vacaciones de primavera?" and in partners they would share a verb. Once the verb was selected they had to conjugate it correctly before being able to place their X or O on the board!

As always their competitive nature took over and we ended up with an impromptu winner and losers bracket to see who the ultimate preterit champ was!  This all took us 10 minutes since they have been reviewing =D

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Conversation cards

Conversation cards 

There are several ways in which I use conversation / task cards in my room. 

1. Speed dating: It's simple! Just set up your seats in two rows where they face each other. I usually also post a timer on the smart board. 

With my novice students, I provide one row with conversation cards and the other side does not have any. 

The idea is that once the timer starts, students can start conversations based on that original question from the conversation card. These mini conversations will only take about a minute or so and therefore your novice students will enjoy it and be challenged enough! I have created this sample set of 20 questions that I use with my second semester students. They are meant to spark conversation with the topics we covered during first semester.   See the complete collection here. 

     

2. ¡A caminar! When students come in to the classroom you give each one a different conversation card. Once you do your morning routine, you get students "warmed up" by having them walk around and start short conversations with different students. In that conversation they must use their questions from the card. 

3. Written assessment. Each student receives an answer sheet. You give everyone one card to start with. They read the card and answer in complete sentences in the space provided. The teacher then walks around the room switching cards so that students have a chance of answering multiple questions. Set a timer and see how many they can answer. This can be done for 2-3 mornings as a warm up activity. On the last day you can collect and grade to give students feedback. I also go over all the cards as a group so we are all on the same page. 

Are there other ways in which you could use these cards in your classroom? 

Hope you can enjoy these ideas in your classroom.  

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