Day One of Spanish One

To wrap up my first week of posting, I am returning to the first day of school.  Over my years of teaching, I have learned more and more how important it is for students to be able to use the language but also to not be afraid of trying to figure the language out.  So what if they don't know every word?  There are many ways to understand someone including body language and looking for similarities to English.

Therefore, on the first day of Spanish, I speak only Spanish to all my Spanish One learners.  I use a lot of hand gestures and do not go into anything in-depth (we save the classroom expectations' discussion for another day).  Instead, we play Animal Bingo.  Each student gets a bingo sheet with animals written in English on it.  I turn on the SmartBoard and we use the random word picker to highlight an animal in Spanish.  The students mark the word on their sheet and we go until someone calls out "Loto!" to win a sticker.

I love this opening activity!  The kids get pulled into the language and walk away feeling like they've learned something on day one.  While they may not retain the animal names, they have begun building an understanding of how cognates work.  Also as I discovered after giving a listening pre-assessment, they have started picking up basic classroom commands in Spanish after only one day.

The bingo sheets.  You can see most of the URL for the site where I made them.  Way more efficient to use an on-line bingo card generator than trying to write up 30 different boards myself!

The SmartBoard program.  The current word is highlighted in green.  Previous words that word stay highlighted as well but change color.

Adjectives and Names

Spanish III activity again :)

After practicing with adjectives for a bit, each student wrote his or her Spanish name on a whiteboard.  They used their list of adjectives and a website with even more adjectives to write descriptions of themselves, each adjective matching with a letter in their names.

When each student was done finding adjectives, they held up the board for me to take a photo.  This class was very enthusiastic about the photo ops; we had several photo bombs :)

Adjective Agreement Practice

Spanish III worked with adjectives today but I decided this year not to pound them with repetitive drill practice.  (Maybe I will regret it later, we'll see).  Instead they received their lists of vocabulary with the new words filled in, old ones from previous years left blank for them to look up and fill in if they did not remember.

To practice agreement we picked one adjective and wrote it on the back of the notes in all four forms: masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural, and feminine plural.  The students were then responsible for writing the names of celebrities or fictional characters that had that characteristic but with the right form.  (Example: one woman for the feminine singular category).  I had the students share in small groups.

After this I pointed out the white papers around the room that each had one adjective on them.  The forms varied from masculine singular to feminine plural.  The students were given the task of writing down celebrities or characters that matched that adjective.  They also had to sign their last names by their contributions so I could give them credit for classwork if I chose to do so.

I made sure to have at least half as many adjectives as students.  I also spread them out around the room, and I think it worked to avoid major jam-ups of students at one spot.

I also was diligent in checking what students were writing.  They did really well on noticing masculine vs feminine but were less observant with the plural forms without me hinting.

Yo, Tú, Derecha, Izquierda

I wanted my students to practice learning each other's Spanish names so we don't get to December and I get blank stares when I name groups and kids have no idea who "Rafael" or "Daniela" are.  (I let kids pick the Spanish name they like, not just one that is similar to their name).  I browsed the Internet a little last night and came across http://www.ultimatecampresource.com/site/camp-activity/you-me-left-right.html.

I adapted I, You, Right, Left into Spanish.  After a few classes, I think I came up into a pretty effective way of getting kids to participate.  I had them make a big circle around me and then we reviewed what Yo to Izquierda meant.  Then I slowly started pointing to kids and having them name the Yo or Tú response only.  After a couple students I added in the other two directions.  We did this for a few minutes, just naming people without a time limit.

Then I added in the counting to five which I did with my fingers to eliminate extra noise as students concentrated.  I threw in a little bit of competition by telling the class that if the student could give the right name before time ran out, then the class got a point.  Otherwise I got the point (I didn't really get many points today).

Just as they started to get maybe a little too comfortable, I added the direction "Cambia" which meant they had to mix up where they were standing.  The kids caught on quickly to ask the names of the people to their right and left as soon as they switched!

In one class I put the students in smaller groups of six in the circle, one in the middle.  That person got to pick three victims to point to and then had to switch out.  Honestly, I think those groups were too small.

I liked this game because I could adapt it to any level just by changing up the amount of Spanish I spoke.

Two Truths and a Lie

So today was the first day with students!  I like to get the kids using Spanish on day one even if it's not an in-depth activity.  This year for Spanish IV I planned on creating a short powerpoint with pictures related to my summer activities.  My sister's wedding and sleep took priority over the actual powerpoint but I still created a slide with four Spanish sentences about what I did (preterit tense).  I read them out loud to the students and then revealed that one of the four was a lie.  Each kid then had to come up to the board and initial next to which activity they thought was false.  Out of 12 kids only 2 guessed correctly that I did NOT buy a new cat this summer.  (My little furball does not approve of siblings).

After this I reminded the students of the yo form preterit endings and gave them five minutes to use the dictionaries and come up with their own 3 sentences, 2 true and 1 lie.  Then one by one they came to the front of the room to read their activities and define any words their classmates did not know.  Then they counted uno, dos, tres slowly with their classmates raising their hands for the number of the potential lie.

Changes I might make would be to just have the students hold up the number of fingers to match which one they think is a lie or maybe write the number on an individual whiteboard and hold that up.