Website with Listening Activities

This week we have been working on hotel vocabulary.  I came across this website with a nice listening activity in Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KK-qBHERXPU

I like how it first goes through the listening without any subtitles in the video but then includes for the second read-through that then reveals the answer.

I just had my students identify which of the four rooms was the one desired by the customer, but you could easily write up a short list of accompanying questions as well.

In later on-line hunting, I found this short multiple-choice listening activity: http://lingohut.com/en/v72485L/spanish-lesson-hotel-checking-in-listening-game.  Not all of the vocabulary was the same as we used but it was another opportunity to practice listening skills with a voice other than mine.

House Vocabulary Game

I've been teaching house vocabulary this week to my sophomores.  It is a vocabulary-intensive unit versus a lot of grammar, something I appreciated since these kids are taking their state exams all five days this week.

We've done a variety of activities this week but a fun small group one is when I split the students into groups of three and hand each group a sheet of scrap paper and then a set of directions they will follow to draw a house.  They keep the directions facedown until I tell them to flip the paper over.  Each student in the group must draw, so usually one is drawing while the others are figuring out the directions.  When they have completed all the directions, the group raises their hands for me to come check how they did.

I usually give the first group or two stickers :)

Movie Trailers' Comparisons

I can't take credit for this idea but I think it's a neat one.

Find movie trailers for a recent (or popular) release in Spanish but one that was shown in Spain and one that was shown in Latin America.  Have students compare what they hear or possibly see.

The example I first saw for this can be found at Zambombazo, a site belonging to Zachary Jones.  He created a great worksheet to go along with the two trailers for "Cinderella."  The activity had students comparing the level of formality shown between characters.  Here is a link to what I saw: http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/elyunque/learning/nature-science/?cid=fsbdev3_042978

I think this is a great way to link student interest to the target language.  Plus you can adjust the level of difficulty for the task to as difficult or as simple as you want so this is an idea that can be adapted across abilities.  I chose to use this activity in level four but I could have integrated it much lower.

Enjoy!

An Observation about Preterit vs Imperfect

This can be a tough concept for my Spanish II students.  One technique that I try to help students learn how to determine which past tense they should use is to teach them vocabulary words that usually (because there are always exceptions!) indicate one tense or the other.

We learned the words last week and practice them today.  We started this part of class by studying the words for 1 1/2 minutes and then the students tried to remember as many words as possible in under two minutes.  Each student recorded his or her name in a column that matched their score (these columns were in ranges: 0-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-13--or something really close to that).  We studied for three minutes and then tried to remember as many clue words as possible in under two minutes again.  Students recorded their new scores under the green line on the board.

We then repeated these steps for the imperfect.

Afterwards I looked at the two sides of the board and noticed that the kids had done significantly better on the imperfect words even in the first round.  I'm not sure of all the reasons for this difference in their knowledge of the vocabulary for the two different tenses but I did realize that they have used some of the imperfect clue words since mid-Spanish I whereas many of the preterit clue words are new this unit.

So my take-away?  Start introducing the preterit clue words earlier in the year when I first introduce the tense.  Then not only have they had the chance to start becoming familiar with those words but they also associate the words with the preterit from experience more than just a given list.

Preterit is on the left side, imperfect on the right after the line dividing my whiteboard in half.  The categories are hard to see (faint marker) but 0-3 started on the left for both groups.  There is a definite skew to the right for the imperfect.