Celebrating Mexico

I recently found out that it was the Year of Mexico in the UK, (http://www.britishcouncil.org.mx/en/2015). The British Council designed some exciting activities for schools to celebrate Mexican culture, click here to see a PowerPoint, lesson ideas and an art activity!

I always mention el Cinco de Mayo in my schools to talk about Mexico. Read Carolina's blog post about this celebration here (and in fact, read all her blog and join her Facebook group: Fun for Early and Elementary Spanish Teachers, she is awesome:-)).

This year my plans include:

• look at the British Council PowerPoint (link above)
• colour Mexican flags and put them on our display 
• watch these videos about piñatas

• make  piñatas (we have been practising at home:-)

•  or just take mine in and play with it (it has homework inside, not sweeties!:-)

• do vocabulary activities with jalapeños, chocolate, chili, tomato: (Me gusta/No me gusta with pero/porque, shopping role play)
• look at pictures and murals by Diego Rivera, they will fit in well with our clothes topic
  
• encourage the children to participate in a Diego Rivera colouring competition (the images are from here)

• look at Mexican football players in the Premier Leage: there is a list on Wikipedia

Mexico [edit]

• Pablo Barrera – West Ham United – 2010–11
• Jared Borgetti – Bolton Wanderers – 2005–06
• Nery Castillo – Manchester City – 2007–08
• Giovani dos Santos – Tottenham Hotspur – 2008–12
• Guillermo Franco – West Ham United – 2009–10^{[Note 49]}
• Javier Hernández – Manchester United – 2010–
• Carlos Salcido – Fulham – 2010–11
• Carlos Vela – Arsenal, West Bromwich Albion – 2008–11

Any other ideas? Please leave a comment here or tweet me (@Erzsiculshaw)!

Sant Jordi crafts

Last week we celebrated el Dia de Sant Jordi by making dragon bookmarks/puppets I had found on Ideas Para Peques at http://ideasparapeques.es/category/sant-jordi/.

I went to Poundland where I got 48 wooden pegs for £1, and I found the rest of the "ingredients" in the school art cupboard: green and red paper, plastic eyes and paint/ felt tips.

I told them about Cervantes, Don Quijote and Shakespeare and the tradition of giving roses and books to each other on St George's Day in Catalonia.

The activity was useful for us because it helped:

• taking turns, asking and answering questions - the dragons were our puppets and they could open their mouths and speak in Spanish (we even did some shadow role plays on the IWB)
• reinforcing the place of the adjective: they had to write "un dragón verde" on the spikes or the wings 
• writing the date "23 de abril"- no capitals in Spanish!

The activity took us about 15-20 minutes.

Conjugation bugs and dice

The KS2 PoS mentions that the pupils should 

"...understand basic grammar appropriate to the language being studied, including (where relevant): feminine, masculine and neuter forms and the conjugation of high-frequency verbs..."

To understand what conjugation is, we did different activities in Y6 last week.

• We learnt an an action  for each of the six verb forms.
• We practised the different forms of the verb "tener" with games like the red herring.
• We sang the verb forms to the tune of Mission Impossible.

In the second half of the lesson we had to use our imaginations to design either a conjugation bug, a conjugation dice or a conjugation creature with six parts. 

The pupils' work is amazing, take a look! Thank you Kimberly Wirries (@SenoritaWirries) for the idea!