We made an "ofrenda" (altar) for Scooter, a pupil's snake who passed away last year. We said some sentences about him in Spanish, and wrote a few things on pieces of card which we put on the class display. RIP Scooter!
We decorated Día de los Muertos cookies I had baked the night before. The pupils said the colours and the body parts in Spanish while putting the icing on. (I was walking around in the classroom and I said that if I didn't hear them speak Spanish, I would eat up the cookie straight away!)
We haven't had the time to watch videos this week, but here are two from previous years:
La canción de las calaveras:
El baile de los esqueletos (good to practise telling the time)
And I would watch this award winning Día de los Muertos video in class but it makes me cry!!!
This summer holiday I am thinking about how to fit in poetry and "great literature"(new PoS) with my teaching. So far I have shared ideas on two poems: DoñaPita Piturra by Gloria Fuertes and La plaza tiene una torre by Antonio Machado. This week I have chosen Canción tonta, a poem by Federico García Lorca, because a blog comment by Carmen (who always says nice words:-) made me look into Lorca's work for children.
The poem is easy to understand and learn, and because it's a "silly one", it will give us the chance to play around and use our imagination (and the dictionary, of course). I am planning to read it to everybody around Mother's Day.
The song:
Previously I mentioned the following activities that could work well with this poem, too:
Find the rhymes! Draw the poem! Change the poem! Choose the right word! 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!
Quiero....
Quiero is a very important verb to learn, so after presenting the poem, the pupils will have the chance to become what they want to be with "Quiero ser..". In Year 3 they could all become their favourite colours and say "Quiero ser verde, azul, etc..". Invite a volunteer to pick a "Quiero ser..." figure from the mystery bag (full of colour people), and the class will have to guess who he/she wants to be. The one to guess the colour right (in a sentence) can come out next.
Quieres ser (de color) rojo?
-No, no quiero ser (de color) rojo.
Quieres ser (de color)verde?
-Sí, quiero ser (de color) verde.
Alternatively, the pupils will have to become a noun they really like. Just like in the poem!They will already know most words on the slide in Year 3 , but can add own suggestions after checking in the dictionary.
I have cut out shapes(the template is here) but there are ready made people shapes in Poundland.
Our dream jobs
The Y5/6 pupils can choose their dream jobs from the list, they are already aware of genders and changes they have to make to the words. We will play vocabulary games like "charades", "mystery voice" and "red herring".
A dialogue
The pupils can make up a silly poem between child and mum: they can say what they want to be (nouns from the dictionary, jobs from the previous slide) and the worrying mum can react with the following expressions. They can perform their lines in front of the class and show some drama. Because it is a silly poem, it doesn't have to make much sense, in fact, the more unusual, the better! Surprise and change are good for us:-)
A Mother's Day gift
A shape to put on mum's pillow: the pupils can decorate it with their favourite noun and write a sentence on it in Spanish.
Mine is being made and hopefully it will say: Mamá, yo quiero ser chocolate.:-)
A few weeks ago we received a parcel from our penpals in Colegio Compañía de María - La Enseñanza in Valladolid. Among other exciting gifts there were some packets of elastic bands the kids use to make bracelets with, and Natalia, the class teacher wanted to share this activity with us.
This is really popular with children in Spain at the moment and making bracelets seems a good chance for us to practise colour agreements, get to know Spanish speaking World Cup countries, follow intstructions in Spanish and learn to compliment each other's work.
I bought more elastic bands on ebay to have a bigger choice.
Today we started to make our jewelleries with the elastic bands... We made bracelets, rings and keyring charms while practising Spanish.
Beware! Complete chaos unless you work in small groups!:-)
I made a PowerPoint Presentation of the language content, printed the slides out and put them on the desks.
Colours that change their endings:
Instructions:
We were lucky, because Natalia sent us a video of some of her pupils showing us what to do. I have written the most important steps down.
Compliments:
Spanish speaking countries:I encouraged the children to use the flag colours of the World Cup.
I am very proud of my pupils' work. Watch this space for more elastic band jewellery!
Thank you Mrs Krajewski, without you I simply couldn't cope, and thank you Natalia, you always make sure we are entertained:-)
I am a big football fan! 2 years ago during the European Cup I was like a tiger in its cage because I was off on maternity leave and couldn't express all my football love in my lessons, which was very frustrating, so my poor newborn daughter had to celebrate Spain's victory with me, like this:
This year I have thought of some activities to celebrate the World Cup, it is payback time for the girls who really enjoyed making bracelets for Mother's Day :-)
I made a slide with the flags of the Spanish speaking countries of the World Cup, we will practise the colours playing the "Who is quicker?" game with our dusters/ fly swatters. We will play "red herring", a game between two teams of the class: while one team goes to sleep on their tables, a volunteer from the other team will point to a country in silence, and when the sleeping ones wake up, they have to guess which country is the "red herring". But there is a twist: they actually have to avoid this country, and they get points every time they say a different one. As soon as they say the red herring, the game is over and we count the points. We play it between boys and girls, twice each time. It is a very exciting game, and it gives us plenty of opportunities to practise the pronunciation of México, Argentina, España, Honduras. In most of my lessons we mention Colombus Day/ Día de la Hispanidad in October, now there is a good chance to ask whether they remember why they speak Spanish in all of these countries.
Players: another good chance to practise phonetics:-), although I have to be careful here because some players are Catalan and say their names differently. Casillas, Hernández,Sergio, David Villa, David Silva, isn't it fantastic to see all these written down and be able to say them correctly? The BBC football commentators definitely didn't do Spanish in school, I feel pain in my heart every time they say Sergio incorrectly, about a hundred times during each match. Apart from "Who is quicker?", and "the red herring" we can play "Who am I?" describing them physically and saying how old they are.
Designing a mascot for the game or for a Spanish speaking country is a good chance to revisit the body parts.
Similarly, designing a national outfit for a Spanish speaking team using the flag colours gives a good opportunity to learn/revisit the names of the clothes.
And one more of those: design the winning trophy to practise writing. I have included England, too:-). I have trophy templates from 4 years ago, they can write the name of a country on it and decorate it with the flag colours (I keep pieces of crepe paper that fall off my colour pompoms).
They can include praising words on them:
And they can wish good luck to their favourite Spanish speaking team!
Before the Winter Olympics started, I had said that I would give a chocolate medal for every medal a Spanish speaking country gets.... I had a big mouth because apart from Spain no Spanish speaking countries had ever received a medal...But when they were coming to me before the start of my lessons for two weeks to say that they had checked the results and there were no medals yet, I felt really sorry for them, so this time I will do another challenge: for every Spanish speaking goal they will get a mini sticker, as long as they can name the country correctly in Spanish. And if a Spanish speaking team wins the World Cup, there will be chocolate for everyone:-))
At the beginning of the lessons, when we do our general Q&A, I will always ask whether they love football.
And the big ones (Year 5 and Year 6) will get another question:
They can answer using "porque" and "pero", how exciting!
I am still looking for a good catchy song to support Spain, so far this is the best, it has the names of the football players! It is a bit out of date, from 2010, so I will ask my Spanish penpal Natalia for a better one when she comes back from her Easter holidays and update the blog. Or we will just have to make up our own song, which will be just as good!
There are plenty of more resources on the web, my favourites are the activities on the Light Bulb Languages website (check out the other topics, too, fantastic page) and there are lots of links on the Janet Lloyd Network site here.
If you worry about my daughter's football identity, I can assure you that she supports England now!
Just like me! In case my husband or Glen Johnson read my blog:-)
But when nobody sees me I shout "¡¡Villa Villa Maravilla!!"
I don't know how many block towers I've built in the past 4-5 years... probably hundreds! No wonder an idea occurred to me one day while putting one up.
I take the whole bucket of blocks in to school and let the kids build a tower as long as they can name the colour they want to put on. A volunteer comes out, says the colour of the block he or she is holding and places it on top of the tower. The aim of the game is to build the tallest tower possible before it collapses.Even though I only have four colours, they have important pronunciation rules and there is plenty of chance to practice ("j" in "rojo", "ll" in "amarillo", "v" in "verde" and "z" in "azul").
We build the towers on top of the desk, so that everybody can see them.
Carnival of beads
All my Spanish puppets are going to the Carnival of Tenerife at the end of February. They want to look their best so they have ordered some necklaces, bracelets and anklets. They are a bit fussy and they want them to be particular colours. They have written down their orders on separate post it notes.We have 10-15 minutes to make as many as we can. We need to dress up 4 puppets and my talking hamster. We work in pairs and everybody will have a small plastic box of beads. It is a good way to practice reading the colours and remembering important spelling rules.
Chicken fight
I tweeted this game before, it is one of our favourites. The smaller the children, the better, unless you have lots of space in the classroom. Two children stand opposite each other, heads together, hands on hips. They close their eyes for ten seconds, myself or a volunteer puts a coloured post it note on their backs. After opening their eyes, the game starts. They twist, turn, walk around and try to see each other's backs. No touches are allowed. When one of them has seen the colour, he or she has to shout it out in Spanish.The idea comes from "Let's play games in Spanish", fantastic book.
Pom poms song
We love singing "¿De qué color?" (number 9 on the ¡Español! ¡Español! CD by Caroll Nicole). The song has 8 colours and I made lots of pom poms of these colours, everyone can have one or two. The classroom is really colourful when the children sing the song and wave their pom poms!
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