Animal Artwork to Learn Vocabulary

*I got the drawing teaching idea from Señora Troncone at Northern High School in Calvert County, Maryland.

At the beginning of class, each student picks up a small whiteboard, rag, and marker.  After brainstorming animal vocabulary in English, the students received a slip of paper with the animal word in English and Spanish.  They wrote the Spanish on the board and then had about two minutes to draw the animal.

Next they opened their notes for the day and started passing the whiteboards.  Every time I said "Pasen" the boards moved, students looked at the pictures, and put their guesses into their notes (since we have computers, they just typed in their guesses; pre-computers I would tell the students to use pencils only).  It is always fun to see the illustrations and notice student guesses on the more abstract drawings.

After the pictures made a full rotation, we went through the vocabulary to practice pronunciation and check that the guesses were correct.  For this part I had pictures of the animals to hold up as we said the animal in Spanish to provide another visual (many of these pictures were created by previous students as a bonus assignment).

My personal favorite from today...

I think next year I want to teach the students some phrases to say in Spanish in response to the drawings as they rotate around the room such as "What is this?" and "This is a good drawing!"  I really like including the students in the teaching of the vocabulary; I have found that only giving the students a short amount of time (15-30 seconds) to look at each board is enough.

Barbie in the Spanish Classroom

This week we are learning clothing vocabulary in my Spanish I classroom.  To introduce the words to the students I used to bring a carry-on suitcase into the room and proceeded to pull out various items of my own wardrobe.  While these items gave the students a great visual, it was a hassle for me to transfer the clothing from my dresser and closet, pack the suitcase, and cart it up to my classroom.

Enter Barbie.  I have filled an old purse with various Barbie clothes.  One pocket has the required vocabulary words that I teach, the other pocket has enough pieces of clothing for each student to have one.

The kids were really excited to watch as I pulled out one piece of doll clothing after another.  I think they were more interested in what would come next from the purse than learning the new words ;)  Then today each student got one piece of clothing for our walk around activity.  Each student would look at what another student was holding and name the clothing in Spanish.  If he or she wanted a challenge, they could also say the color.  It was also amusing to watch a few of them put the clothing on their fingers like they were dressing an imaginary doll.

A sampling of the clothes

Pictionary Relay

Many of my students enjoy the game Pictionary so I will break the class into two teams.  Each team had one artist drawing the same vocabulary word with their teammates trying to be quickest to write down the correct word on their personal whiteboards.  The problem was kids would just look at whichever drawing was better which just didn't seem fair.

The relay system has one student per team pulling a card out of their team's envelope.  The artist shows me the word and sets to work.  As soon as all of his or her teammates have the correct word or phrase on their whiteboards, the card gets put in the discard pile and someone new hurries to the main board for a new word.  The game continues until all cards for one team have been guessed.

Coleccionar las piedras (to collect rocks/stones)

I like this game because the words the two teams are working on are different.  It is a little more hectic for me to keep track since there are two different words being guessed at the same time, but I think the trade-off is worth it.  More students seem involved in this version.

Clothing Description Activity

Have the students write a description of what they are wearing on a small slip of paper.  All the papers go in a basket or box.  Student form a straight line.  Then you pick out one description and read it.  As the details emerge, the students form a circle (or oval) around the student being described.

Obviously this activity works best in small classes or possibly a smaller subgroup of a class while the others work on independent practice.

Practicing Vocabulary with Jetpunk

Last school year I came across the website JetPunk (http://www.jetpunk.com/).  Basically it allows you to create lists of words or phrases that students then are given a set amount of time to try to complete.  For example, I could ask them to name all the colors we are studying or write the capital that goes with each Spanish-speaking country.  (Since it is a free site, there are hundreds of quizzes available although many are related to pop culture rather than academia.)

I will use JetPunk as a warm up and an exit slip.  At the beginning of class students will try to write as many words as they can.  Then when time is up, I have them put a slash in a tally chart of where their score fell.  At the end of class after we have practiced, we take the quiz again, make a second row along the bottom of the chart, and compare our progress as a class.

Score chart with round one on top and round two on the bottom.  I have students put their tally mark in a range of numbers rather than the exact number.

The quizzes rely on spelling being correct although accents are ignored.  Students can write in answers in any order which is nice in one way but also means that they do not necessarily have to know what words mean, just that they fit in the category.

I like JetPunk because it can be a quick activity to jar kids' minds and show them how much they know (or don't know) in a short amount of time.  It also checks their spelling for them which means they can't overlook a misspelling (which they will do if they just write on paper).  I don't like that accents are glossed over and that vocabulary understanding is not as important.

How to Keep the Countries of Central America Straight

I struggled with the geography of Central America for a long time.  Honestly, it wasn't until I visited Costa Rica and the area meant something to me personally that the countries finally fell into place in the puzzle for me.

We practice with maps over several days but my Spanish I students still mix up the countries (not a surprise to me).  So...I came up with a sentence to help them remember the correct order of the countries: Girls eat hamburgers, nachos, and chips.

Here's how it works:

Girls = Guatemala
Eat = El Salvador
Hamburgers = Honduras
Nachos = Nicaragua
Chips = Costa Rica, Panama.

Students just use the sentence to go down through Central America, hopping from one country to the next.

Some of my students did not like that I combined Costa Rica and Panama in one food (I was trying to keep it shorter) so we changed the sentence to Girls Eat Hamburgers, Nachos, Chips, and Popcorn (or Pizza depending on the kid).

Later in my next Spanish I class when I noticed some students mixing up Costa Rica with other "C" countries, I made a note to use a different sentence next year: Girls Eat Hamburgers, Nachos, and Crunchy Popcorn.  I hope that using "crunchy" will connect to Costa Rica better.

Do you have any ideas to help students remember the locations of Spanish-speaking countries?

Edit:   Look what I found while grading these tests!  (written near "Map 2," sorry that it is sideways)

Making Up Quizzes with a Listening Portion

This is going to become an obstacle.  How do I give students an equal opportunity to make up quizzes that involved a listening or speaking portion but still keep moving my classes forward?

One idea that I used today was to have the regular class use an on-line activity to guess what the new vocabulary words meant.  For example, I had written them clues earlier, and then they had to pick the choice from several multiple choice answers.  The "quiz" was designed to immediately tell them if they were right and if they were wrong what the correct choice was so they could fill in the definition in their notes.

I would like to revise the activity to include pictures; I just didn't have time to put them in.  I also had to make sure that the answer for each question appeared immediately after that question instead of waiting until they had taken all the questions.

We did go through the vocabulary to practice pronunciation once I had completed the listening portion of the make-up test with my previously-absent students.  I also went up and down the rows to have the students tell me the English.

Another advantage to this set-up is that any students who were not in class (and also my students who were making up the quiz) have access to all the vocabulary on-line now.

A Way to Integrate Listening on Quizzes

With a determination to incorporate more communicative skills in testing this year, I tried a new idea with my Spanish II students on this week's irregular yo forms in the present tense quiz.

I read a series of questions to my students such as ¿Dónde traes la computadora? or ¿Sabes el inglés bien?  In a world with unlimited time, I could ask the question to each student and have him or her answer me back.  However, today I had each of them write a full sentence response to my question.  This way I could test their listening and writing skills.

I did read each question very slowly.  (We had also practiced with similar questions on Wednesday and Thursday.)  I am still debating if I need to have the students write an English translation of their sentences but I think I could tell from their responses if they understood my question or not.  I liked that this quiz also required them to pay attention to question words (I only used who, what, and where to keep the focus on the verbs.)