A poem :Doña Pita Piturra

In my August blog posts I am sharing ideas about how we will work with poems next year. Last week I wrote about La plaza tiene una torre, and today we have Doña Pita Piturra by Gloria Fuertes!This poem will fit in with our Clothes topic in Year 4 (see my clothes games here). It has a few different versions online, I will use the one from my Gloria Fuertes book I bought from here. 

Here it is....very easy to learn!

Get a doll or a puppet to illustrate the meaning while you are presenting it, and use gestures for "grande" and "ancho".This is what I mean:

 

And repeat the shoe verses again.

I will tell the children that Doña/ Don refer to royalty or when addressing an older person. They are a bit like Sir/Lady/Dame. During the lesson we will challenge ourselves to call each other with Don and  Doña when referring to names, like when I say "Necesito dos voluntarios, ¡venid Doña Amy and don Callum a la pizarra!".

Find the rhymes!

Get your fly swats and ask for volunteers to find the rhyming word. You say "elegantes", and they have to find "guantes" or "antes". Other examples: sombrero-plumero, zapato-ancho, toquillas-polillas, guantes-grandes, guantes-antes.The one to hit the correct word stays out, the other one gets an applause from the class and chooses the next one to come up to challenge the person already out. I have made two slides for this game, one has clues, the other one only features the words. Don't worry, we don't  break an IWB every week in our Spanish lessons, the pupils know that they can't actually touch the screen just go VERY close.

Dress the doll!
 

Another competition, my pupils love races! Say a line from the poem or a whole verse and let's see who can dress the dolls the quickest! You will  need two sets of each item for this game.

Dress yourself!

Say a line/verse from the poem and see who can put the right piece of item on. The pupils can use blu tack to stick the moths on their clothes:-) If you don't have the items from the poem, they will just have to pretend that they are putting the hat, shoe, etc. on.

Draw the poem!

The pupils can draw the poem or part of it on their whiteboards in pair work or in front of the class on the big board.

 

Language detectives:

Where do the words belong to? How do you know?

 



 

And where would you put these new ones? Why? A good way to introduce adjective-noun agreement and start to build awareness! This slide comes with clues:

 

 

And here is a more challenging one for later:

 

 

Change the poem!

There are so many words we already know in Year 4, I have copied some on the slide, could you place them in the poem somewhere and think about changing them if they need any change?

 

 Choose the right word!

 

 

 

 

And use the activities I blogged about last week, just scroll down for the details!

 

 

Mix it all up!

 

Run, read and recite!

 

Make a movie!

 

Guess the emotion!

 

Steal a vowel/consonant!

 

Add/change a word!

 

Create a song!

 

 

Buy the book! It is full of the most incredible poems and amazing illustrations!

 

We "read" it at bedtime in my house in HUNGLISH:-)

 

 

After publishing my post, I got a tweet from @valleseco recommending poems on Light Bulb Languages: http://t.co/BwaIWSv72e  Excellent selection!

 

Clothes games

The washing line competition

 

I have a big blue laundry bag full of my children's outgrown clothes, T-shirts, trousers, coats, shirts, shoes, skirts, dresses and jumpers. We play lots of games with them, one of the most popular is the washing line game. It's a competition and it's about speed, so the kids love it. You will need a stopwatch, a washing line, pegs, clothes and various lists of the clothes you have with you. Girls can play it against boys (just add the times together after a few games) or just two kids against each other. Two children have to hold the washing line up high. One pupil is given a list of clothes, the teacher starts the alarm and the partner has to put the piece of clothes on the washing line with pegs. It has to be in the same order as on the list and if something falls down, it has to be put up again. The winner is the team or pupil who is the quickest. You can find a stopwatch online and then everybody will see the time.  It's a great game for practising the colour agreement in Spanish. The slowest team or pupil gets homework: to do the laundry at home for a week:-)

 

Dressing up teddies

 

As a mum of two little kids, I have a hundred teddies in my house.... the following game was inspired by two of them: Dora and the Fat Controller. Toddler clothes fit on them very well, so they can be dressed up quite easily. Two kids come out to the front, they each get Dora and the Fat Controller, and I say "lleva una camiseta" or "se pone una camiseta" etc. They each have to find one in the big pile of clothes and put them on the two teddies, while the rest of the class repeats "lleva una camiseta" many times. The quickest stays in the game, the other kid has to pick a new dresser, and the game starts again. It is a good way to get everybody talking by repeating the sentences and also a good noun-adjective agreement practice. It takes a while to put a T-shirt on Dora's big head or to put trousers on the Fat Controller's chunky legs!

 

 

 

Design a school uniform

 

The children love being creative and designing uniforms, football kits, Olympic wear, etc. They draw the clothes, colour them in and label them in Spanish. It is a good practice of noun - adjective agreement. At the end of the activity, you can make a contest by voting: the best uniform will win a prize. It is great display material!

 

 

 

 

Fashion show
 

The children love it because they can bring their favourite clothes in, they do a quick change before the lesson. When they come back, they walk on the catwalk while others introduce them with sentences like "Es Connor. Lleva una camiseta roja y pantalones azules."  I have some toy microphones they love holding.I take a picture of everybody and make a fashion show display with the clothes labelled in Spanish. It's easy to label the photos in Powerpoint, I use different colours for masculine and feminine nouns and then give the photos to the children. I call these pictures "postcards" or "certificates", they can take them home and explain to their families why some words are written in blue or red and where the colour goes in Spanish:-)



 



 

Music

We sing "A pasear" from Let's sing and learn in Spanish , this song is good for practising "Me pongo...".
Mi tía: A good action song from Elizabeth, the words are here.

 

 

We look at typical clothes in Spanish speaking countries, I have PowerPoints and videos like this from Ecuador: