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.

Easter ideas (2)

Hello! I haven't written any posts for more than a month- the longest break since I started blogging 14 months ago.... The reason is that I am covering Spanish 2 days a week, so with my other 3 jobs I am teaching 4.5 days a week, about 700 pupils in 25 different classrooms! While I am doing very well in the classrooms, I am too tired to actually write about the activities...but it is Easter holidays now and I can catch up with blogging:-)

Here I come with the Easter activities:

Haribos- adjective agreement and Easter vocabulary

I found these in Home Bargains last week, only 60p a bag, and the contents are enough for 2 classes!We practised adjective agreement with the bigger ones (KS2) and learnt Easter vocab with KS1. It was a big success! I made the children promise that once they swallowed the haribo, they would always have to remember that the adjectives come after the nouns in Spanish.

 Tricky sounds sorting

A few weeks ago Clare Seccombe tweeted a link to me with fantastic vocabulary learning ideas: 

http://talesfromaspanishteacher.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/vocab-stations.html?m=1. 

I got inspired to make a sound sorting activity for the children to practise "j", "ll", "v", "z" and "r". The Easter Egg Smarties were not for eating, jut to play with in little groups.

 Nazareños

A quick crafty activity at the end of the lesson, the template is here.

Monas de Pascua

I made these last year in my oven, but I wasn't teaching full time and my daughter had long afternoon naps... This year I just went into ASDA and got mini donuts ( about £1 per class). They decorated the donuts with icing and they had to use their best Spanish pronunciation when saying the colours. Again, this was an end of the lesson activity and took about 10-15 minutes.

eTwinning project: Easter card exchange

I am a big fan of working with other teachers, and very lucky to have found excellent colleagues like Carmen from Sunderland.

We have worked together before (Christmas singing, Valentine's card exchange), this time we decided to write Easter cards to each other. The Burscough children made a spring dictionary (a good chance to revisit  dictionary skills and get the glitter jars out;-) and we got beautiful cards with the date on, that is what they have been practising in Sunderland. We had a look at how they used the preposition "de" and circled this word on our cards. And most importantly, we enjoyed the Easter chocolate egg in the middle!

"Teaching Languages with 100 objects" : an answer to @valleseco

The other day I read Clare Seccombe's (@valleseco) blog post "Teaching Languages with 100 objects" where she asks:

"Are there 100 objects that could be used for enriching the teaching of languages in Key Stage 2?

I propose that the objects would have to have some kind of cultural significance, that they would somehow "matter" to the country or countries whose language is being taught.  And I also propose that there doesn't have to be a list of 100.  A smaller list may be just as suitable."

I got very excited about this "challenge" and decided to list the objects I take into my Spanish lessons. While my daughter was asleep in the afternoon, I went up to my office in the loft to take a"cultural look" at my teaching materials, and came down with a box full of treasures. This is the cultural selection only, if I had to bring down the other teaching toys and props, I would have to buy a bigger kitchen table!

Here is my list:

flag: (colours) castañuelas (jotas- a Spanish dance) Spanish doll (where we live, what languages we speak)

pictures from South America (Spanish speaking countries in the world, travel, colours, clothes, family)

Advent calendar (numbers and saying the date), the Three Kings 

Spain scarf and football T-shirt (clothes, colours, adjectives,phonics-ñ) The scarf is always with me, I use it to blindfold pupils for mystery games.

 kitchen clothes with recipes (food, using dictionary, clothes, role-play)

South American finger puppets (role plays, taking turns)

 piñata (birthdays, saying the date, months)

capote and waistband (discuss bullfights, Sanfermines- saying the date, clothes and adjectives)

books and DVDs (blog post about the movie, for literature click on "poetry" on the word cloud on the right hand side)

worry dolls from Guatemala (family, travel, colour, clothes)

money from Spanish speaking countries (travel, shopping, numbers, plurals)

panpipes from Peru, rain stick from Chile, fan from Spain (weather, travel)

maps, train tickets, bus tickets (transport, directions, travels)

dragons and roses for Sant Jordi (role plays, Valentine's Day), Buzz who speaks Spanish in Toy Story- we learn the song "Hay un amigo en mí" for Valentine's Day from him.

Pencil case and big pencils from Spain (classroom items, travel, colours)

Dora the Spanish teacher (clothes, personal descriptions)

calendars (numbers, saying the date, months, name days: blog here ) alphabet poster, board game and cards from Spain

world map (travel, transport, where they speak Spanish, phonics), Day of the Dead cookie cutters (colours, shapes, opinions- blog post here), travel catalogues (travel, writing a postcard, Spanish speaking countries), jalapeños (phonics, food)

mantón (clothes, travel, colours)

aprons (restaurant role plays) paella (phonics, food)

flamenco dress (clothes, colours, adjectives)

Spain map, leaflets (weather, travel, transport, phonics)

 

We had lots of fun playing with these toys on Saturday afternoon!

Added on 27-1-2015

After reading Carmen's comment, I am adding one more picture....of course I had Spanish supermarket catalogues:-) I use them to show my pupils the Christmas jamón and I leave them on display while we do the "food" topic. Thank you, Carmen:-)

"Happy New Year" activities

Happy New Year to you all! Here are some activities to celebrate the New Year.

En 2015, quiero.....

I have made a PowerPoint slide with 12 wishes for the new year. We will work out what they mean using the illustrations and looking at the words - some are very similar to the English ones. 

We will say what we want in 2015 (at different levels by using "y" and "más").

En 2015, quiero salud.

En 2015, quiero aventuras y chocolate.

En 2015, quiero más sol.

12 Grapes

Based on the tradition that that Spanish eat 12 grapes at midnight on New Year's Eve, we made twelve wishes for the new year on a grape template last year. The pupils had to write these in order of importance, this made them think about the meaning of the words. I got this idea from the Janet Lloyd Network Facebook Group.

"Happy New Year" in 32 languages

We will watch a video where you can hear "Happy New Year" in 32 languages and we will try to spot the Spanish one. If you have EAL pupils in your classrooms, they will be pleased to hear their languages. (English, Persian, Uzbek, Swahili, Ukrainian,Burmese, Russian,Bengali, Dari,Arabic,Portuguese, Mandarin, French, Sinhalese, Pashtun, Azerbaijani, Serbian, Hindi, Indonesian, Nepali, Kirundi, Viatnamese, Macedonian, Somali,Tamil, Kirghiz,Urdu, Albanian, Turkish, Cantonese, Hausa, Spanish)

¡Feliz Año Nuevo! - games

This sentence gives opportnities to remind the children of the  the upside down exclamation mark, the sounds "z", "ñ", "v" and the place of the adjective in Spanish.

We will definitely play the Mystery Voice, where the blindfolded person will have to find out who is wishing him or her a happy new year. We will also hide a little box with 12 grapes inside and play the Hot/Cold hiding game, where a detective will have to find the box while everybody chants "¡Feliz Año Nuevo!"- louder and louder as he/she is getting closer.

eTwinning - tools for collaboration ( #eTconf14, Rome)

At the end of November I was invited to participate in the eTwinning annual conference in Rome (#eTconf14). It was an amazing experience, I learnt a lot, met wonderful people, came home really inspired and decided to share my experiences on my blog.This post is about a workshop called Collaborative Activities: the key to successful eTwinning projects.

The whole point of the workshop was that instead of just presenting ideas, slides and presentations, the teams should collaborate in the projects and produce something together using different tools.We all had iPads/laptops and had fun testing these websites.

You can introduce yourself using Padlet. We all said a few words about ourselves, and my UK partner Vivienne and I even linked a photo of  some conference dessert with our introduction. (Right at the beginning of the workshop, the presenters said that you had to be careful with projects including UK teachers, because they are always on holiday...:-) We clarified this little misunderstanding by pointing out that we only had 6 weeks in the summer, and longer breaks during the school year.)

You can find a name for your group in Easypolls, the participants can vote for the best one.

You can design a logo together using Draw It Live.

You can write a poem together using TitanPad, it was good fun to read it together.

  AnswerGarden  is a good tool for evaluating the project, not just at the end, but during the project, as well.

 "Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress but working together is success."  (quote from the workshop description)
Thank you Paraskevi Belogia and Irene Pateraki!

Christmas ideas (2)

Secret signal with the Advent calendar:

This is one of our favourite games we play in Spanish. It works really well with lists (days, months) and numbers. In this Advent version, two Santa detectives leave the room, the class agrees on who gives the signal (pulling an ear, winking, scratching the head etc.), and when the detectives are back, they have to guess who gives the secret signal: they have 2 chances each. The class can only say the next word if they see the secret signal.

I bought a big Advent calendar from Imaginarium at the airport duty free shop in Rome for under £5 (link here), but it is easy to make your own or use a chocolate Advent calendar instead. We practised saying the dates by playing this game but you can just say the numbers 1-24 to start with.

I also hid stickers in some of the pockets, the pupils had to say the date and they could check whether it was a lucky pocket! They love competitions!

Merry Christmas bunting:

I printed and laminated a multilingual Christmas bunting designed by Lively Languages who make the most amazing resources, check out their website on the link above. I challenged the pupils to learn to say "Merry Christmas" in different languages for some stickers, I am hoping to hear a lot of languages next Wednesday!

Roscón de Reyes:

I found a simple Roscón recipe and baked 8 mini cakes. It is not as hard as it sounds and I only made it for one class. It took about an hour to make them and we spent 10 minutes decorating them and 10 minutes writing about them. In Year 4 we are learning to describe people this half term, this cake project was good to revisit adjectives and plurals. For decorations we used smarties and haribos, they are easy to buy and handle. The class teacher decided which was the best one....number 5:-) (He is a minimalist!)

A song in assembly:

Y3 are planning to sing a Christmas song in Spanish, this is the one we chose:

We invented actions to go with the words: waving, drawing a Christmas tree in the air, putting our thumbs up, and shaking our bells. 

Here are Santa's helpers doing all the bunting laminating:-)