Ir Quick Practice

Today in Spanish II we reviewed the irregular forms of the verb ir in the present tense.  I have two Spanish II classes this year and my earlier one is the slightly more advanced group as a whole.  I was still pleasantly surprised by the number of students who remembered the forms of ir from last year.  One of them spit out the forms extremely quickly while another one gave me a disgruntled look as he told me that he was not going to forget that verb after I said it so many times last year (voy, vas, va, vamos, vais, van!--I think we did an activity where they had to hold up the card with the subject that matched the correct form of the verb such as "yo" to go with "voy" when I said the conjugated form.  I think I'm getting sidetracked now!).

After we wrote the verb into our notes, I passed out little cards to the students.  On one side were two different subjects, one in black ink and one in red.  The ones in black were easier such as simply "ella" while the red subjects were a bit more difficult (vosotras, los bomberos--a word they haven't learned yet).  On the back of each card were the matching forms of the verb so I knew that every student had the answers to his or her card.  Students then walked around the room and approached each other to give the conjugated forms of ir based on the subject on the other student's card.  The neat part though was that the approaching student could request "facil" or "dificil" and chose which subject he or she wanted to try.  If they got an easy question right, it was one point, two points if they got a difficult one correct.

I really liked that this activity gave students choice in their practice.  It allowed the ones who were not as comfortable with the verb ir to build a stronger foundation while the students who remembered the verb from last year could have a bit of a challenge.  It also did not take me very long to create the cards, a big plus for a teacher with four different preps!  This concept could be adapted for different levels of Spanish too so I like that flexibility.

Question side

Answer side (the harder ones sometimes also got an additional explanation from me.)