November 3, 2008
Song success: Hace tiempo
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Another song that my students beg for is ‘Hace tiempo’ by Fonseca. We call it “the dancing firemen song” and the video will show you why. They think it’s funny that the song isn’t really a happy one, but it sounds so cheerful, and while he’s singing it in the video he looks so cheerful. […]
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October 31, 2008
Overgeneralizing, again
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A few posts back I commented on how my Spanish 3 students are overgeneralizing and I’m getting “Yo es” all over the place. Since I made lots of comments about it I’ve seen less. But I noticed something today–my Spanish 1 cherubs are doing it. I haven’t taught Spanish 1 in three years and never […]
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October 30, 2008
You may have seen the story I wrote for Spanish 1 to read and then re-create in this post. Here is the story for Spanish 2. It involves a llama named Sra. Fluffy Stuff and a blue dog named Blue. One question many students answered wrong was “Why did Sra. Fluffy Stuff leave?” A lot […]
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October 30, 2008
Song success: Me voy
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Another song that has been highly successful in my class is Me voy by Julieta Venegas. I’m excited to see what she’ll do on the Latin Grammys next month. My students LOVE this song. I use it primarily for the phrase me voy, with some random vocab thrown in. The video is funny and interesting, […]
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October 30, 2008
Not posting lately
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If my posting is a little erratic these days, there are a couple of good reasons. First, nine-weeks grades were due, and the whole jury duty thing had put me so far behind on grading that it consumed my nights and days to get the grades in on time. Second, I’m pregnant. And sick. Not […]
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October 20, 2008
overgeneralizing
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My Spanish 3 students are overgeneralizing. It’s fine, it’s a normal part of language acquisition, but it’s driving me nuts. In case you aren’t familiar with the phenomenon, overgeneralizing is what happens when a child acquires the irregular past “went,” then discovers that we form past by adding -ed to verbs, and overgeneralizes to the […]
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October 20, 2008
The outcome of Pin Pon
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So, my Spanish 3 loved the Shrek video clip. I also played the Pin Pon animation on YouTube (both clips are linked in the previous post). I never know what’s going to grab their attention. They actually brought their friends, whom I had in Spanish 2 last year, to my room after school to view […]
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October 7, 2008
Pin Pon in Shrek?
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I don’t normally show American movies with Spanish dubbed in, because they’re culturally irrelevant and many times beyond my students, both linguistically and in attitude–they assume it’s the same as the English and tune out the language. But I found this clip of Shrek 2 on YouTube, the torture scene where the prince is dipping […]
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October 7, 2008
Best practices
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At the KWLA conference, so many people mentioned cool things you can do with a computer… if you have a projector in your room, which I don’t. I’d asked for one before, but the tech guy told me that no one was checking out the one in the library, so he didn’t see a need […]
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October 3, 2008
Reading in Spanish 3
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I firmly believe that the best way to acquire new vocabulary is to hear it or read it, in context, in multiple contexts, many times. So, personally, I read in Spanish whenever I have the time. I rarely read fiction in English. This year I’ve been really in to Isabel Allende’s Zorro and Inés del […]
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October 2, 2008
SCORE!
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I’ve had jury duty for two weeks. Because of that and our wind storm (thank you Ike), I’ve taught three days in the last three weeks. And during the two weeks I was gone, I came back every day or every other day, in the afternoons, to find a note from the sub about all […]
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October 2, 2008
My media list
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I’m working on a media list to share with teachers, specifically for the ACSI regional conference in Dayton next month. You’re welcome to view it here. I teach at a private Christian academy, and my audience at the conference will be other teachers in similar situations, so I have a separate column specifically for moral […]
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