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!

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.  

FOLLOW ME

¿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.

                                    

FOLLOW ME

                       

Emotions, descriptions and exit tickets

Exit tickets

After a long maternity leave and a wonderful summer, I am back at school and excited for a new school year at a new school! For a few months now I really wanted to try and incorporate exit tickets in my classroom so reviewing emotions, adjectives and gender and number agreement was the perfect way to use them.

My current level 2 students have had different instructors at level 1. Therefore I wanted to see how much review we needed to do in order to get us all on the same page with regards to the topics mentioned above.

Students were asked to answer the following questions:
1. ¿Cómo te llamas? What is your name
2. ¿Cómo eres? How are you? -- Describe yourself
3. ¿Cómo estás? How are you? -- How are you feeling

Three quick answers and LOTS of information easily gathered with this custom made "friends".  Now that the students have been introduced to this assessment tool, I know I will be using them more often.

**Also, after gathering the information I needed, these were displayed on the door for them to see other people´s answers and drawings!**

How do you use exit tickets?