Activities
June 26, 2013
This is the last post in a short series on songs that help students develop accuracy and proficiency in talking about the present tense. For the other songs, see: Sigo con ella Hace tiempo Carmelina (and also, a post on songs for stem-changing present verbs) Tengo tu love – Sie7e This song is another one […]
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May 19, 2013
By the time students get to advanced classes such as those intended to prepare them for national standardized exams, almost nothing should include only simple recall. We ask questions like why and how, ask for debates and opinions, ask for synthesis of authentic sources and troubleshooting common problems. How can we prepare students for this from novice levels? There’s one […]
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April 15, 2013
No, not the latest John Gresham to while away the class period. Whether it’s for field trips, ceremony practice, or just a widespread illness, sometimes I have a class where many of the students are gone. Inevitably this leads to the same request: a free day. For some reason, my students think that because their […]
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March 26, 2013
Fun activity #9: A leer
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In 2011 I blogged about what a boring teacher I really am and how I was inspired by some conference workshops to make things more fun in the classroom. This is the ninth post on the activities that came out of those experiences: “let’s read.” The premise here is easy – when the random picker […]
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March 21, 2013
Cortometraje for narration
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One of our major goals for Spanish 3 is to refine narration. We believe this is a critical function of language. Teenagers do it all the time. They talk about what they did over the weekend, over the summer, yesterday in math class. They tell stories about the amazing shot at the basketball game or […]
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March 5, 2013
This is part 3 in a short series on songs and activities that improve student accuracy and proficiency in talking about the present. Carmelina – Jorge Correa This is a fun song. If you’re interested in an identical use of no me hagas sufrir, no me hagas llorar, check out Manny Manuel’s No me hagas […]
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February 27, 2013
In Spanish 3 we just wrapped up a unit I reworked to continue working on students’ narration in the past, framed within understanding and talking about the news. This activity we did combines culture, interest, interpretive (reading) skills, presentational (writing), and interpersonal (speaking) skills. First, using a newspaper website or a regional/international version of […]
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February 19, 2013
Feel like your class is disengaged and/or bored? This atmosphere could be rooted in all sorts of problems, but one of the main causes is that you have students focused on the same activity for too long. Based on research, your brain needs breaks from a particular learning-intensive activity in order to process and encode […]
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February 15, 2013
Fun activity #8: A cantar
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In 2011 I blogged about what a boring teacher I really am and how I was inspired by some conference workshops to make things more fun in the classroom. This is the eighth post on the activities that came out of those experiences: “let’s sing.” My lyrics file is currently over 230 pages long. Usually, […]
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February 13, 2013
A while back, a hashtag hit the trending topics on Twitter in Mexico: #quierounnovioque. I used the program Archivist to save the tweets and export them to an Excel file. I often do this if the teaching value of a particular trending topic hits me. In this case, the tweets were full of subjunctive used because […]
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February 1, 2013
If someone asked me what motivated my students the most -to continue learning on their own, to more vocabulary, to greater accuracy- my answer would certainly be music. Just this week one of my Spanish 3 students who is struggling the most with any level of verb accuracy identified forms of conseguir and what they […]
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January 27, 2013
This is part 2 in a series of songs and activities chosen to improve student accuracy and proficiency in talking about the present. Hace tiempo – Fonseca This song has wide student appeal. Regardless of taste, it’s one of my students’ all-time favorites. The video is great fun also. Proficiency goals: talk about ongoing and […]
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