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March 22, 2009
Winds of change
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This really has nothing directly to do with Spanish class but I just have to jump up and down (virtually, of course) and publicize that I HAVE INTERNET!! We haven’t had internet at home for almost two years, and we just got it last night. It has a lot to do with my pregnancy and […]
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March 16, 2009
Want to make your students feel better about their Spanish? Show them this clip (or part of it, if you need to avoid certain clothing issues b/c of your class makeup). The reality competition “Nuestra Belleza Latina” just kicked off 5 participants because they failed a dictation test. The part where the girl says that […]
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March 12, 2009
I just did this with my Spanish 2 students and was surprised at how well it worked. I went to Google news and typed in a couple of our newsy vocab words from recent weeks–like choque and testigo–and also the helping verb ‘han.’ I printed out 3 articles (it was 2 pages front and back) […]
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March 9, 2009
Hey, my title rhymes. 😀 Luis Fonsi has a new(ish) song out that actually hit the Billboard Top 100. It’s kind of slow but very catchy. The song is called No Me Doy Por Vencido, and incidentally the video is pretty good too (and 100% legal, yay!). In one part in the chorus, the verb […]
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March 9, 2009
A shout out for Jacob & Joshua
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I’ve been pretty sketchy lately in all areas, trying to be 7 months pregnant and teach full-time and be a good wife etc. So the blog has dropped a bit off the radar but I wanted to come on and post a few quick updates. One is the story test below. Another is to give […]
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March 9, 2009
Today I gave my 3rd quarter story test in Spanish 3. It’s about a peasant and a princess who get married despite the facts that they just met and her father doesn’t approve. It uses a lot of the vocab we’ve worked on in Spanish 3 this quarter. There’s a mistake on the question part–I […]
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February 20, 2009
I’m all about sharing free activities we’ve found on the internet as opposed to paying a ton of money for not-very-useful curriculum supplements. The internet worksheet project my Spanish 2 students are currently working on has taken them in some really fun directions. They’ve come up with stuff I don’t know I ever would have […]
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February 19, 2009
A product I love
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EMC Paradigm has a product out called SymTalk. The part I use is a set of 256 symbol cards that are magnetic. (I requested a magnetic board specifically to use this and my school got me both, thank you Whitefield!) The cards illustrate various concepts and words without translation. On mine, the word is there […]
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February 18, 2009
Good stories for commands
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Here are a couple of good stories to use when teaching commands. En aquel prado is a book I actually start using the first week of Spanish 1 to practice numbers, but the best use of it is for commands. The most repetition is in uds and nosotros commands, although with the first animal there […]
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February 17, 2009
Here’s a book you can get for $4 on Amazon that is great for at least two things–imperfect vs. pret (which we call aba/ía verbs and sudden past verbs in my class), and subjunctive influence (which we call verbs that show something’s influencing them): La Gallinita Roja. It’s bilingual on Amazon, I think, but mine […]
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February 17, 2009
If you have a way to project a webpage somewhere in your room, you’ve got to check out es.barbie.com. We did this in Spanish 1 today to practice house vocabulary, but you could use it for so many things. We also did the makeover part of it to practice colors. It’s amazing how much they […]
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February 13, 2009
One of my problems with standard curriculum is they can’t provide enough variety in activities focused on one issue. They try, I’ll give the writers credit for that, but there are only so many textbook/workbook exercises you can design to elicit subjunctive for doubt. And really, do we believe that those cheesy textbook videos offer […]
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