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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No more translating

"What's that word?....  I have on the tip of my tongue!"  As a multilingual, I find myself in that situation often, specially in front of my students. At that moment, I must describe the word I am looking for in order for them to help me figure out what its called.

So if this happens to me, it will surely happen to my students! This is when I was inspired by a popular game where one has to guess what is on the card (placed on one's fore heard) via the descriptions provided by their teammates.

At the time I decided to pilot this activity, my intermediate students where learning about direct and indirect object pronouns. I would love to say that I am textbook free, however my school is simply not there yet. So, what is one to do when teaching this complicated grammar topic to high schoolers while engaging them in the target language? Take them on a trip!

Every student was going to get "ready" to take a trip to an exotic Spanish-speaking country and therefore they had to prepare themselves. We took the vocab from the end of the chapter and in groups started creating detailed descriptions about them.

For example:

La maleta: La haces en tu casa. Lleva tu ropa en las vacaciones. La facturas en el aeropuerto. 

La playa: Puedes nadar en ella y tomar el sol. Tiene arena y puedes relajarte aquí. Está cerca del mar. 

El hotel: Tiene muchas habitaciones. Es donde duermes cuando estás de vacaciones. Tiene muchos huéspedes. 

When all our vocab had unique descriptions made, I created a quizlet to let students practice it at home, and to use it as a warm up activity (side note: my students are obsessed with quizlet live! Try it!)

At this point, the process of creating descriptions became second nature to them so it was time to challenge them with my circumlocution cards. Each one provides them with a prompt to use in their description. 

For example

Lo /la (s) usas para....     

Es necesario ... 

NOW WHAT??? Time to REALLY challenge them. I made copies of the task cards and I made copies of our vocabulary words. In teams, students would select a vocab word and the teammates would use different circumlocution cards to give them hints about the word the student had to guess.

    

This has become one of their preferred warm up activities. The best part is that now that they understand the expectations, I have been able to throw in new vocab and they have rose to the occasion of creating fascinating ways to describe these new terms. 

Give it a try by downloading it HERE. 

If you use it in your classroom, leave me a comment. Tell me how it went. Would you change anything? Add anything?

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La rutina diaria - Actividad de repaso

Today my students were reviewing for an upcoming test on daily routines. This includes reflexive verbs, telling time, and the use of adverbs. I found Kim's blog recently and subscribed. She shared this free download to practice time. I used it with a twist!!

Before students arrived, I taped one of Kim's cute little people to their desks.

Once class started, I got us started. 

First I told them what the time was in my card, and followed it with my daily routine at that time. 

For example: Son las 5:30 de la mañana. Los lunes me levanto lentamente a las cinco y media de la mañana. 

Then each student had to follow the time stamp! So after 5:30 am, came the 6 am. That student shared that at 6, they usually get ready: a las seis de la mañana mi hermano y yo nos arreglamos. 

This went on and on for about 10 minutes! The students enjoyed it and really got into it! 

This was a fun bell ringer that allowed us to put many concepts together and kept students engaged in the activity!

As a follow up, I used a download from El tarro de los Idiomas. This worksheet included in her download was the perfect way to get students to write about their routines at home.

Try it in your class and let me know how it goes!

Check out Kim's blog!

                        La hora

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¿Verdad o mentira?

Are you telling the truth? or are you telling lies? ... that is the question!

This year, I have many students who are very shy. Sometimes, simple presentations are very intimidating for them, which is why we started playing this game. By calling it a game instead of presentation, students immediately relaxed! In doing so, the quality of their presentations increased and we had a lot more fun. My second hope was that by calling it a game it would spark some friendly competition! AND IT DID =D Since students had to figure out if things said by the presenters were truths or lies, it made them better listeners. Overall I was very pleased with this modification in my classrooms.
It is important to point out that this activity could be used with any proficiency level.
For example, my novice kept it simple. When we were going over ser  and adjectives, their statements were descriptions about themselves. Soy saludable, soy perezoso, soy pelirrojo. My novice-high / intermediate made it a bit more challenging. So while working on the topic of daily routines, they wrote and presented statements like: Me levanto temprano todos los días. Nunca me pongo pantalones cortos. Siempre desayuno rápidamente. 
You get the point!

Download it HERE for free and try it in your classroom. Let me know how it goes.

                                    

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La rutina diaria

Exploring daily routines with a simple game

La rutina y la gamificación en tu clase

Hola a todos, 

This week I was looking for ways to maximize the traditional textbook activities about reflexive verbs and daily routines. Inspired by one of Laura's recent YouTube videos (watch it here), I decided to go for it and here is what I experienced. 

Prep time: The idea of maximizing textbook activities sounds overwhelming to many, but it is not! Allow yourself to think outside the box and the results will be so incredible you'll wonder why you did not start this sooner.  

For dictation part of this particular activity there are three ways to set up. 

- #1: Look into a few of those textbooks you have and just copy the routine stories that are included. 

- #2: You could also type those stories so that the font is a bit bigger and easier to read. 

- #3: Create original routines based on samples shared by students. 

For the follow up part I simply created four different comprehension questions for each team. The key is that I wanted each group member to be accountable. This only took a few minutes per text -- many of the questions apply to multiple texts. 

The activity: As Laura explains in her video, you can do this in partners or groups. Knowing my current classes, I decided to try small groups of four. I also know how clever they can be, so I made sure to have various samples going on at the same time. I posted the original texts on the board and set up the teams in pods around the classroom.  

The rules: Clear rules are key so here are the few I mentioned to my students. 

1. One student visits the board at a time. 

2. All group members must participate. Therefore every student has to go to the board at least once. 

3. No running and no yelling. 

4. If they used English (non TL) then they would be penalized with 10 seconds without accessing the board. 

5. Spelling out words to teammates is acceptable as long as it happens in Spanish (TL)!

Follow up: What do we do after they get the story? Once they had it completely written down, they brought it to me. I reviewed it and made sure it was accurate. Then each student was given a comprehension question to complete. 

There are two ways to do this step. 

1. They can write down the answer individually -- allowing students time to focus on form. 

2. Students have some time to think about the answer and then come to respond verbally. 

3. Students use let's recap to record their answer. This does not allow for deciding an instant winner. **Read below for a brief explanation on how awesome this app is =D

The results: I knew my students would step up to the challenge! They love competing against each other. I saw many of them actually listening to one another and the answers to the comprehension questions were filled with wonderful details they remembered!

Give this activity a try. You can download a free sample HERE, or get four stories with four sets of comprehension questions by downloading it HERE.

If you like this activity, please leave me a comment telling me how it worked in your classroom or perhaps something you changed to make it better!

Don't forget to follow my Facebook Page and visit my TpT store for more resources. 

 

 

Let's recap is a really cool app that allows you to get verbal responses form students. For this particular activity, one class chose to record their responses to the comprehension questions rather than talk to me personally. The following day, we read the different routines as a class, I asked the questions and we listened to the answer from each team. Students had to decide if the answer was correct or if it missed something.  In order to do the let's recap option, I extended the activity to 2 days. One for the original activity and one for going over the comprehension questions. 

Time well spent!

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Conjugation puzzles

Conjugation Fun

I am always looking for more fun and interactive ways to get students to really commit to memorizing vocab and conjugations. It is only after achieving this first step that we can really work on the rest of the fun activities I have planned for them knowing that there will be some focus on form. I also love tapping into their competitive spirit!

I found that short games are great bell ringers that get students in Spanish more and make it easier to transition into any of my follow up activities. They also hold the students accountable for knowing these items and practicing them often.

Using these conjugation puzzles, partners ask each other the conjugations of the common verbs that our unit uses. Only after both agree on the conjugation can they lay the piece down on the puzzle.

The puzzle on the picture is a free one I found online. It is a simple rectangle with AR verbs.

I created a few more challenging ones for my early finishers that were customized to our particular unit. Check them out here

Mission conjugation: NOT impossible!

We all dislike them but we all admit that, at some point in the process of acquisition, we have to see if students are using a particular tense correctly.

There are many ways to present students the idea of conjugation drills. I often try to tap into their competitive spirit, and therefore include many games into our daily "warm up" activities.

At the beginning stages of a chapter, students are still trying to commit the new vocab and new conjugations to memory. In an effort to put them on the spot and perhaps encourage them to study a bit more every night, I introduced my conjugation scrabble.

There are few rules to this game and therefore set up is easy and playing it is even easier!

In the TL, I share some of the key phrases that they will use in their game: "Palabras con amigos". This is my classroom version of the popular app "Words with friends". At some point in their lives they have actually played the original scrabble, done a crossword, or even used the app themselves. Therefore the details on how to actually play the game go smoothly.

Phrases like "my turn", "how do you spell", "who is the subject", "that is not correct" are all phrases that they must incorporate in their interactions while playing the game. The ultimate goal is for them to have some basic conversation while practicing their new conjugations.

The game went well! Students got into it! When time ran out (I set a timer to prevent it from going too long and therefore having students stop using the TL) students had to take their notes out and revise their spellings. The student who had the most words was the winner. Any spelling mistakes counted the verb as wrong. Winners enjoyed a small treat!

The next day we had a different activity and everyone seemed to have gone home and reviewed. So, in my eyes, Mission conjugation:Accomplished.

Minute to win it

Inspired by the popular game and accommodating to our testing schedule, 6th grade reviewed some of our "old" topics like colors, vegetables and fruits. 

We organized the class into 3 groups and they wore my new, awesome glasses!!!! 

Our topic flashcards were distributed and the timer was set. Students then had to turn around and say the Spanish name for their teammates´ card. Once we did a couple of rounds of just vocabulary, we made the game harder: each student had to create statements with the vocabulary words they saw. The team who could get through all its players in the least amount of time won. 

It was a lot of fun. It also helped students see where they needed to review more in order to be ready for the new school year. 

Armada

Battleship

The first month of school can be very challenging due to the many scheduling conflicts testing brings. In order to accommodate any last minute plans, I decided to bring different games that would help students review our "old" material and get back to the swing of things. 

In order to multitask, we played Battleship, o Armada in Spanish. This game required students to review their fruits, vegetables, colors, creating questions as well as descriptive sentence structure. 

Students had 3 different "boats" to set up and learned the terms for "hit", "sunk", and "miss" to aid their game. 

It was a lot of fun, and as usual, their competitive spirits came out. Lots of fun and now we were up to date and ready for new material to come our way!!!