Easy Idea for Spanish Club Activity

Este miércoles pasado tuvimos el club de español para enero.  Jugamos las cartas en grupos pequeños.

Los juegos "Siete Loco" y "Burro Castigado" son fáciles para aprender.  Hay más información aquí: http://www.pagat.com/national/mexico.html

Simple End to Testing Week

With midterms in most of their classes on Wednesday and Thursday, I did not want to do anything really difficult in my classes on Friday.

Since we have looked at the Incas in Spanish II, I decided to have them go on-line and look at some descriptions in English of ten different places to visit in Peru.  They were all on the same website.  Students wrote down the name of the place, two facts, and if they wanted to visit or not and why.

To keep kids from sitting all period, I also posted ten little charts around the room.  Each one had the name of the site and then two columns: Quiero Visitar or No Quiero Visitar.  After reading about a site, students had to go write their name on the side that matched their opinion.  Really a simple idea but it allowed them to get up and stretch their muscles a little.  This tiny shift in the activity also decreased the possibility of boredom slightly as well as creating the opportunity to compare opinions.

In the future I might change up which side of the column is the positive and which is the negative just to make them pay attention...I definitely want to use different vocabulary on some of the signs as well (viajar instead of just visitar for example).

Los Objetivos Para 2015

Here is the latest in my interactive bulletin board series: Goals for 2015!

My original plan was for students to write a goal for this year on a piece of paper two times, once in English and then again as much in Spanish as the student was capable.  Spanish I would only have one or two words while Spanish IV could handle the full sentence translation.  Not wanting it to be hard to take down, I settled on putting up different sheets of construction paper for each class on which they would then tape their little papers. 

Then I got my visual brainstorm.  I chose black paper for the background for the classes and said the darkness represented the emptiness of a future without hopes and plans.  The basket of paper was filled with different-colored scraps instead of just white to add bright, beautiful pops of color as the future grows full of wonderful goals for 2015 :)

 at the start

 growing brighter

Spanish IV goals

A Twist on the Worksheet

I love watching my students create with the Spanish language.  However, I also have to balance that open-ended time with being able to translate specific sentences focused on certain grammar concepts especially on their major exams: the midterm and the final.  With our midterm next week we are reviewing how to conjugate ser and tener as well as adjective agreement.

In previous years we have had worksheets that we do in class.  Students work individually or in pairs/trios and then we either write the answers on the board or I send students around the room to look at the answers on other sheets (get a little bit of movement going!).

Today I tried a variation on the idea of the worksheet.  After using our warm up to quickly review the two verbs and rules of adjective agreement, students numbered lined paper from one to twenty-eight, skipping a line between each number.  Then each student picked up a card from one of the stools in the front of the room.  The card had an English sentence on one side, Spanish answer on the back.  They wrote the answer on their paper and flipped the card over to check.  If right, they drew a star on the paper.  If there was an error, they crossed out the wrong word and re-wrote it correctly on the line below.  Then they scooted back up to the front of the room to trade out cards.

The cards varied in difficulty which was also a benefit.  I liked that the students did not stay sitting for very long (today is only our third full day of school since Christmas due to the weather so we're still adjusting to being back!).  I realize that the time it took to get up, get a card, and sit back down might be considered wasted time but I preferred allowing students to work at their own pace and that they stayed active; my second period was much more involved than when we have done "normal" translations.

In the future I might put two sentences per card just to cut down on the walking if I feel that too much time is spent moving around.  Or I could put kids in stations with a pile in the middle and kids trade their cards with the pile and then after 8-10 minutes, they move stations.  We'll see :)

This did require more prep than just writing a worksheet but I definitely think the benefit to the student learning outweighed my time spent writing the cards at home.

Verb Visuals: Transformer Verbs

The preterit tense has always been tough for my students with its many rules and changes.  I explain them, we practice, but we still struggle.  With our midterm next week, I have begun the review with my Spanish II students.  Since today was also a late arrival day due to nasty winter roads, I only had twenty minutes with each class.  Instead of writing out sentences or conjugating random verbs, I decided to review the irregular stem verbs by discussing the set and creating a visual with the hope that the different approach would help the information stick a little better.

Earlier in the year when I first taught these verbs to my Spanish II students, I taught them in four categories or as I referred to them "families."  In our notes each family had its own house (really, I drew houses in the notes and that's where students wrote the information).  The families were named after the common letter that appeared in all the new stems after they were transformed as part of their preterit conjugation: U, V, I, and J.

Today we rewrote the infinitives in each family to make the letter.  For example, saber formed one side of the U, poder the other side, and then poner curved to close the bottom.  Then we wrote the new stems next to each letter.  We used a different color for each family.  At the end students used their normal pens or pencils to write down the unique endings for these four groups of verbs.

Then I named an infinitive and a subject and all the class had to think for a few seconds before I pulled a namestick and that student answered.  We all repeated before I gave the next question.

We ran out of time here but if it had been a regular period, I probably would have sent the students on-line then to do some more individualized practice.

 I advise practicing creating these visuals on your own first.  It did take me a few tries to get more comfortable with writing them and then I could give advice to the kids on how to be more successful with their letters (we still ran out of room with the larger J family...)