Speed dating

What a day! After the big storms last night there were fallen trees, road closures and diversions, I had to drive like James Bond to get to school in time, so I really had my heart in my throat, as if I was going on a date. I didn't have enough time to rearrange the classrooms, I managed to do half of one, I made up single tables with two chairs. I placed my home made little fortune cookies on the tables and put some heart balloons up for the right atmosphere:-)  I put my PP up on the screen and we were ready to go....

 

Speed dating

 

The children had 2 minutes to ask each other questions, they could use mine or they could make up their own. I told them that they could change identities and I gave a demonstration at the front of the class: I was Dora the Explorer and my partner was Bob the Builder! They found it was hilarious to change names, they were Peppa Pig, Tinker Bell, etc. Some of them were 95 years old, some were just 1 or 2. I clapped every 2 minutes, they had to change partners then. When I asked for feedback, they said that it was a great activity because they spoke Spanish to each other. This made me realize that I don't give them enough opportunities to actually have conversations with each other, so I will make a great effort from now on to make sure they get to speak to their classmates. We play lots of games as a class, we write a fair bit, now the focus will be on conversations. There were lots of giggles while doing this activity, be prepared!
Thank you for this idea, Creative Language Class!!! (fantastic blog here)

Fortune cookies and cocktail stick hearts

 

The preparation of this activity took me an hour and a half last night......guess what, I left half of the biscuits in my car, half a mile away from the school. I had to run in my short break to get them and just arrived in time for my year 6 class.

The learning objective for today was to create sentences with time expressions in our topics: daily routine (Year 5) and school (Year 6). I printed out  2 sets of sentences like "Me despierto a las 7." and "Leo en la biblioteca a las 11". I made fortune cookies for Year 5 and cocktail stick hearts for Year 6. At the beginning of the activity I told them that they had to find their better halves, or as they say in Spain, their half oranges:-)  (la media naranja= the better half). They found that very interesting and funny!They walked around the classroom saying their sentences and when they found their better halves, they could eat the hearts. We laughed a lot, boys were with boys, girls with girls even though the cookies were given out randomly.

 

Love is in the air:-)

 

Everybody who came out to play or do an activity had to put my big pink sunglasses on or had to hold a heart balloon! We learnt to say "Te quiero", the kids wrote it down on small post it notes and they will give them to somebody tomorrow:-).

We haven't finished celebrating love yet, in April we will talk about "el dia de San Jordi", the Catalan Valentine's Day, when boys give roses to the girls  and girls give the boys books. What a great opportunity to write our own minibooks!

Happy Valentine's Day to all of you!
Erzsi