El calendario Azteca

El calendario Azteca

¿Cuándo es tu cumpleaños?
¿Cuántos años tienes?
¿Cuáles son los días de la semana?
¿Qué te gusta hacer los martes?
¿Cuál es tu rutina diaria?

These are just some of the concepts that you can review using this cool idea. I found it many years ago and have used it to help my students improve their presentational skills!

Here is how it works:
1. In the outer ring, they will jot down the months of the year. They can use images that represent each month. I ask my students to make their birthday month stand out. 
2. The middle ring represents the days of the week. They can also represent each day with images about things they enjoy doing on those days. I ask them to make the day in which they were born stand out as well.  
         *Use this to review gustar, or to review reflexives and daily routines. 
3. The center can be used in different ways:  
         *The year in which they were born 
         *The current year with a drawing of who they are today. 

When the project is done, half of the students line up around the classroom and half of them will walk around. In a way, these students because "art pieces" in our live museum. This will allow half of the class to present to smaller groups. I have found that this is less intimidating for my shy students.
I set a timer, and when the timer goes off, the rolls reverse.

If you would like to try this in your classroom, download it here.

Did you try it in your classroom? I would love to read about it! Leave me a comment!!

Here are some of the examples from my classroom.

          

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Por y Para

Cabin fever anyone?

We have had some seriously cold days here in the midwest, which have kept me home! On these days, our school does online teaching days. The challenge is creating work that my students can do on their own. So I try to give them something simple that will get them to practice what we have been doing in class. This way, next time we see each other we can pick up where we left off.

Por and para was one of those topics I needed them to practice without me being there to facilitate examples.

I decided that they needed help organizing their notes, so here is a simple handout where they can start thinking of different scenarios in which to use por or para.  You can download them HERE


           

I have also found out that my students enjoy task cards that they can use to start conversations with others or that make them walk around the room seeking examples. Therefore, I gather many of the topics that we have been working with in the classroom and made example task cards! Check them out here.

Or try both of these together in my bundle.

How do you teach por and para in your classrooms?

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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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Technology in the classroom

How can I include technology in my Spanish classroom without it becoming a distraction?

This is something I ask myself every time I am planning a new lesson.

My students and I are fortunate to have a classroom where each student has a computer. This is both a blessing and a course. The attention span of a teenager is limited... add a computer to the mix and POOF! that minimal attention span disappears!

I am a huge fan of visual representations of the things we are doing in class. This visuals become conversation pieces and can lend themselves to many follow up activities. I even use them in our games! My students are also aware that I am not the best at drawing. That is where storyboardthat.com comes in!  It is a user friendly app (free for the basic features) that allows your students to create scenes and customize them!

This unit we talked about our daily routines. We had many conversations about what a person does, what we do as a group, and how we do it, etc. At the end of the unit I wanted to do something a bit different when it came to assessing their knowledge of reflexive verbs, vocab and adverbs (the other piece in our unit), as well as telling time and transition words. That is when my coworker suggested letsrecap.com! Wonderful app (free for the basic features) that allows students to record themselves.

The activity:  Select one storyboardthat.com product from one of their classmates. Project it on the screen and allow students a couple minutes to think about what they see. **No writing is allowed and no notes or textbooks are allowed ** When the timer goes off, everyone must start recording their own story about their classmate's routine.

The result: Check out some of the cool representations they created. As for the verbal responses, I was so impressed! They had finally reached a point where they could tell a story! There were fewer concerns on grammar - because they really knew it -- and they allowed themselves to tell the story while including lots of details. Since they all recoded at the same time they were not worried about their classmate's opinion.
*Downfall to using letsrecap* currently they do not have a way to download the recordings so I cannot share samples with you nor keep some favorites to share without accessing the app itself.

Grading:  I set up a simple rubric of what I was looking for in the assignment and clicked on the PLAY ALL button on my let's recap queue. Easy and fun and I am going to show some of my favorites to the class!

How do you include some technology in your classroom? Please share in the comments!

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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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