Spanish with Profe Botero-Moriarty: May 2018

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".