La Tomatina

 

On Wednesday morning I visited Becky, a friend of mine I hadn't seen for ages. We were chatting and having a cup of coffee when she casually mentioned that she had been to the Tomatina last August. My pulse  immediately went up, I  got very excited and invited her to my Spanish lessons to talk about this great festival. She said "All right, and when?", I said "TOMORROW!!!" Becky is off to Spain next week for a long time so there was no time to waste... Becky said she could come to both of my morning classes, a Year 5 and a Year 6. They are my longest sessions, 60 minutes each with lots of possibilities:-)

 

The right atmosphere

 

Early in the morning I went to Tesco to get some soap and a packet of ham to create our own "palo jabón". Finally these ugly posts in the classrooms gained a real purpose (we keep bumping into them when we play the lighting house directions game). The looks on the children's faces were priceless while I was sticking my ham up on the post before the lesson.Then Becky and me covered the post in soap, a very strong coconut one, the only kind they had in stock in the supermarket that morning:-)

 



I had asked the men in my family to make me a Lego truck and I filled it with tomatoes. I put the truck, diving goggles and swimming goggles in the middle of the classroom before the lesson started.

 

 

At the beginning of the lesson I asked the pupils whether they had noticed anything strange about the classroom, they mentioned the ham, the truck, the tomatoes and the "GIRL"(Becky:-). In year 5 we had never mentioned La Tomatina, in year 6 we had, so they could name the festival based on the clues.

 

Tomate, tomate, quiero tomate...

 

 

Becky gave her presentation, it was fantastic! We saw photos of her with her friends getting soaking wet, sticky and red! My favourite picture was Becky's hair after the Tomatina, she needed 4 washes to get all the bits off! She taught a chant: "Tomate, tomate, quiero tomate.....", this is what everybody shouts while waiting for the tomatoes to arrive. She reminded the children of the "ñ" in Buñol, taught us words like " los mozos", "el camión"  and "el cohete" and answered all the questions we had.

 

Me gusta la Tomatina PORQUE....

 

After the presentation we asked the children "Te gusta la Tomatina?" and they answered "Me encanta/Me gusta/ No me gusta la Tomatina." Then I said that now we are going to learn to give reasons with our opinions ("Es una fiesta estupenda/divertida/aburrida/sucia"). Those who could say their opinions with a reason were given a tissue tomato or paper tomato and could participate in the tomato fight at the end of the lesson. Obviously everybody's hands were up to express their feelings so we listened to about ten and then just listened to the rest while the children were doing pair work later. The tomatoes have to be squashed before throwing, so it was all right for me to prepare them quickly with tissue paper and not worry about the looks:-)

 

 



 

YO!!! We are rapping!



 

The day before the lessons I came across my friend Emilie's rap song on twitter and really  loved it, I downloaded  the app AutoRap and was desperate to try it with the pupils asap. We created a song with our opinion sentences and we found the rapping hilarious.

 

http://www.smule.com/p/173506830_34053417/frame

Mini books/Posters

 

We had about 10-15 minutes left and the pupils were given a choice: make a tomato shaped mini book or design a Tomatina poster for this year's tomato throwing festival in Burscough!!! In Spanish of course, because we will send the posters to Buñol:-) They are not finished yet, we will spend about 15 minutes on them next week and will put more images up then.

 

 

 

La Tomatina in the classroom

 

Our last activity was to actually throw the tomatoes at each other! I gave them a whole minute to go totally crazy and they loved it! I will have to use 1 minute of "Tomatina time" as a reward in my lessons in the future:-)
 

 

 

(And I am inviting you to a REAL tomato fight if you  think that Intercultural Understanding doesn't bring progress....:-)

 

 

 

 

Pancake Day again:-)

We almost finished our pancake flapbooks from last week! We will send the images to our Spanish penpals who will decide which one is the yummiest. The lucky winners will get lemons!:-)

 

 

 

Tomorrow is Pancake Day so I have thought of some activities we will do in different levels/contexts.

 

Flip the pancakes!

 

One pupil flips the pancakes and everybody else will count them in Spanish. When the pancake falls, another pupil will come out and we will just continue counting from the previous number. It is going to be a team competition between boys and girls. We made bean bag pancakes with my little daughter, we always have our PPA time together on a Monday morning:-) We didn't find beans at home but dry pasta works just as well.

 

 

 

 

Find the pancakes!

I can't play this game in every classroom because I don't have a break before all of my sessions to prepare for it, which is a shame because I know how the pupils like searching for my hidden treasures. I will hide pancakes with numbers written on them and the kids will have to stick them on the whiteboard next to the right number. 

Arrange the pancakes!

A race to see who is the quickest to put the pancakes in the right order (increasing or decreasing).


Pass the parcel frying pan!

 

In some of the classes this will be my starter, we will have to create the sentence "Me gusta el limón." I will stick the pancakes on the frying pan with blu tack. Those who pick a word when the music stops will have to come out to the front and make up a living sentence. Then one by one I will send the words to sleep by turning the pupils around and the rest of the class will have to remember the sentence with the gaps until there are no words left at all.

 

 Throw the pancakes!

Every pancake will have a number on, the pupils will have to stand at a distance and throw them into the frying pan. We will add the numbers together at the end. I read this idea on  http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/pancake-day.

 

 

Me gusta...

I was browsing on twitter half asleep last night and found this gem, thank you Janet Lloyd  for tweeting it:-) We will practise "Me gusta/no me gusta...., pero...."  sentences with pancake fillings.

Happy Pancake Day!

Pancake Day flapbook

 

We spend every Sunday afternoon with our family best friends and cook the evening meal together. Today we made pancakes for dessert and I got inspired to make a pancake flapbook in class next week in preparation for Shrove Tuesday (4th of March this year). 

You need a piece of card and some paper strips, I used 5 of them. On the outside we'll draw our favourite fillings and on the inside we'll write the names in Spanish.

 



 

 

 

 

27/02/2013: We made our pancakes! We changed the title to

Me gusta(n)...,  

¿Te gusta....?

Rellenos de crepes

The children will have to finish colouring them at home, but they have all  drawn and labelled their favourite pancake fillings.

 

 

We'll also make a class survey: "What's your favourite pancake filling?"

 

Enjoy:-)!

 

Telling the time

 

 

Telling the time keeps comig back to us when we talk about our daily routine, school days, asking about train times.... These are a few games we like playing.

What time is it, Mr Wolf?

I like going to charity shops and buying all kinds of toys and props for my lessons. When I saw the wolf costume, I immediately knew I would have to use it, the pupils would love putting it on.We play this game in the classroom so we had to change the rules because we can't run around. I learnt this by experience:-) The children have to stay behind their desks, they can dance or move as long as they stay in one place.  A voluntary wolf comes to the front of the class and stands there with his back to the rest of the children.
The children keep asking:
"¿Qué hora es, Señor Lobo?"
The wolf responds with a time expression like:
"Es la una." "Son las dos." "Son las tres."  (You can add "y media" as well).
The pupils keep on moving and dancing.

But when he says 

"Es la hora de comer", and suddenly turns around, they all have to freeze. The first one he sees move has to sit down. 
 

La caja fuerte
 

This safe comes from a carboot sale, it had been collecting dust in my son's toy basket when I realized the huge potential it could have in my lessons. I have 'converted' it to a time lock safe with a help of a post it note. I put 5 stickers or small chocolates inside and all hands will be up to guess the time code. The magic time sentence (and my hands) will open the safe if the right sentence is said.
 

Small hand, big hand

In some of the classrooms there is a big space in the middle where we can play this game. I put number flashcards 1-12 out imitating the clock and ask for two volunteers, a tall one and a short one. They have 10 seconds to discuss what time they will be (the others cover their ears,

¡Cerrad las orejas!). After this, they lie on the floor, the tall one is the big hand, and the small one is the small hand. I took some photos of my daughter's dolls to illustrate the activity.

A minibook: "¿Qué hora es?"

I am a big fan of minibooks, I saw them first on Clare Seccombe's fantastic blog .I have used quite a few templates in the past but haven't done this one with the pupils yet, I will try it in the next few weeks. It is a good way to make them write, and for peer- and self-assessment. They can get up, walk around and ask each other "¿Qué hora es?", the answer is under the flap.
 

 

Un, dos, tres, ¿Qué hora es?

A very catchy song to practise times and it even shows Spanish speaking places.
You can find the lyrics here:
 

 

 

Vuela la luna

 

If you like action songs and you don't mind getting dizzy and totally exhausted, then sing this song by Grupo Encanto. And you can tick the Intercultural Understanding box by explaining to the children that in Spain they show the number 2 with their fingers the other way around:-).

The lyrics are here.