Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from 2012

Spanish All Around You!

I'm finally starting to get in the swing of things again this year, and I, of course, got the infamous "back-to-school-cold"!  So sorry for not updating in a while. I wanted to share with you a wonderful project that I love having my students complete.  Now, my students do not live in a town that has a high population of Hispanics, especially in our schools. So I created "Spanish All Around You" project.  They were constantly telling me that they didn't see Spanish in our town, or that they didn't know anyone, so I needed to change that!  It's pretty basic, I have them go around THEIR community and collect 6 items in Spanish. It can be anything they have at home (cell phone instructions, xBox instructions, hair straightener, etc) or they can go around the community (restaurants, library, grocery store, etc.) to find the items. I even had a student find some Spanish on a visor in their parent's car (the air bag warning). It's always awe

Save paper!

This is just a quick idea for how to save paper for student homework. I have to give all this credit to my co-worker (Sra. Kosek). You go to Word, and click on "page layout". Next, find "columns".  I use 2 for worksheets, and sometimes 3 for vocabulary lists and what not. Then finally, you can type in 2 columns. So I make a worksheet on one side, then I copy the exact same one to the other side. Here's a sample of one: I know that a lot of schools are putting restrictions on paper, so this helps with copies! I then cut them into 2. I'll be back with more tips/an actual blog soon! ¡Adiós!

Verb conjugation review

With my advanced 8th grade students, we are reviewing the verb "ser". I did not want to give them a bunch of worksheet.  I've been seeing tons ofs ideas on Pinterest about the younger grades using clothespins to identify and label different items ( I unfortunately don't have the original post).  I've had this idea for a while, but I just wanted to figure out how to incorporate it.   I came up with this idea:   1.) They'll be taking the clothespins and placing the Spanish onto the correct English conjugations. Quick and easy review.         2.) They'll be placing the same clothespins into sentences used from our ¡Exprésate! level 1B cuaderno de vocabulario.     In order for me to keep track of the activity, and so they're writing, I created a quick worksheet with directions and a spot to label [not quite sure if this is the best way yet, but we'll see-ideas are always appreciated :)]:         It was really simple

Pinterest & blogs, oh my!

Well as I'm sure you already know, Pinterest has the BEST ideas for teaching. Not only Spanish, but also general classroom information. This past summer when I was in Spain working on my Master's, I found myself discovering that not only can Pinterest help me with figuring out how to get a stain out, but also it can lead me to GREAT blogs! I'm getting very excited and pumped for this year! (Well I think Spain had a lot to do with this also). Idea #1-Blogs I have discovered so many amazing Spanish teaching blogs! Here's some of my favorites: The Creative Language Class  [Amazing use of proficiency based assessment] Foreign Language Begins with a T  [Technology based blog] I hablo espanglish  [Great lessons for middle school] I love finding great resources! I'm going to try to implement some ideas, so I'll let you know how well they work.  Idea #2-Crafts As I said, Pinterest has some amazing ideas, so here's some of them, and some I've ad

Ejemplos

Buenas tardes, So after talking about some of my speaking activities, I thought I'd share with some of you my "Show and Tell" or Mostar y explicar as I call it. I use this with clothing unit, and sports, but it can really be incorporated into any unit you'd like. Click Here for the link. Enjoy! Srta. :)

¡Hablamos!

We all know that speaking is an important facet of learning a foreign language, well there really isn't much to a language without communication. So I thought for my first post I'd share some ideas/tips that I use in my classroom. Useful tools I have recently been lucky enough to have my district purchase a subscription to www.lingtlanguage.com , and it has really been useful.  I like to do this before we take a speaking exam. It is amazing how well the students do when they do not feel the pressure of speaking to me face to face.  This may seem odd to others, but I show a movie during the time I'm giving my students their "orales".  I just showed my Intro. to Spanish class Selena as we're coming to the end of our Ch. 3 unit [ Exprésate 1] I have the students come up, and they have a minute to prepare, then I have 2 desks set up facing each other for us to speak. As the students are having their speaking exam, the others are working on questions and learni