Uncategorized
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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February 10, 2009
A good story for ‘tiene’
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Usborne books has a series of books that are good to read when practicing tiene. I bought a couple to use with my baby–one is Este no es mi osito and the other is Este no es mi dinosaurio. They’re touch ‘n feel board books, but they work fine in a classroom too! The things […]
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February 9, 2009
There’s a really odd technopop group out of Argentina that became somewhat a suprise hit in the last two years. The band is called Miranda! and I use one of their songs–once a year only in Spanish 2 and 3–for ‘we’ commands. I really don’t like technopop, and this song gets on my nerves like […]
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February 9, 2009
A story for demonstratives
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I’ve come up with a story that in both Spanish 1 and 2 has worked really well with teaching demonstratives. We’ve worked with those quite a bit for the past couple of weeks, and I’ve been amazed at how fast my students have become consistent and proficient at using them. Side note: A couple of […]
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February 9, 2009
Rules in a communicative class
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What rules should you have in your class if you want it to be communicative? What if you’re teaching using TPRS? In my class, these are my rules: 1.) Watch. 2.) Listen. 3.) Tell me when you don’t understand (even if it’s a hand signal, which in my class is an X made with your […]
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February 9, 2009
Cause and effect
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A few thoughts on what we shouldn’t do, in my opinion: If you don’t want your students to translate in their heads when they speak… DON’T include translation in your assessment. EVER. Real translation/interpretation is a very advanced skill and will come with time anyway. If you don’t want your students to run through a […]
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February 6, 2009
Relating everything to English
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Cross-linguistic transfer, the problem of a learner’s native language interfering with the one being learned, is a big enough issue without us as teachers compounding it by constantly relating things to English. For example, giving students ways to remember words by relating them to English is not always a smart idea, in my opinion. I […]
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February 3, 2009
A correction on La Frase Tonta
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For my commentary on the song “La frase tonta de la semana,” look here. Sometimes the music videos I link to are a violation of copyright. Sorry ’bout that–I’m a real stickler for copyright law. Just ask my students how often I tell them I won’t burn music for them and I disapprove of linewire […]
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February 3, 2009
It greatly bothers me how history books, history classes, and the daily news sources largely ignore Latin America. Car bombings and such in Iraq make headline news all the time because we’re involved and that somehow makes them more important than such things that have become commonplace in Colombia because of a more than 40-year […]
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February 3, 2009
A project based on motivation
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Here in Kentucky we’re still digging out from last week’s ice storm. Yesterday I was able to get online for the first time in a week, so today, it’s back to blogging! If you’ve taught from a textbook for very long, you’ve found that they’re just not motivating to students who aren’t already self-motivated, and […]
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January 22, 2009
“How much is estuvo de pie?”
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One of my students cracked me up this morning. I haven’t laughed so hard in a while! We were doing this story where the students were at a circus with a monito and Garfield and no estuvieron de pie. One of the students, Karyssa, was the vendedora, estuvo de pie, y vendía carne de res, […]
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