Quick tips: using commas in Spanish

Hi there,
I am starting a series of quick and short posts about certain aspects that are usually difficult for people learning Spanish.
Easy and quick, a visual to review/learn one concept.
Today, I want to start this series with an orthography topic, commas.
Remember: Spanish and English are sometimes similar, but also different ;)

Lunaprofe 12/19/2014  No comment

IB Profile in Spanish: Communicator

Hi there!
Another poster to use in your class. The image grasps the concept of being a good communicator and the definition of the attribute is added.
This poster is perfect to hang on your class wall or just to use it as a quick prompt in your class.
In sources and links are a really interesting document if you are looking for activities to teach/learn the IB Profile for your IB course. And, remember, if you have new activities not listed in the document share with the community.
Have you made a poster about the IB Profile in your class and want to share it out? Contact us ;)

If you are looking for activities in Spanish to work along with IB posters check this post.


Do you want to know more?

Sources and links:

• IB Profile posts in antonioluna.org
• IBLP collaborative document
• IB Profile in Spanish

Education is simply the soul of a society

as it passes from one generation to another.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Lunaprofe 12/15/2014  No comment

IB Profile in Spanish: Reflective

Hi there!
Another poster to use in your class. The image is a very famous one about Bobby Fischer who perfectly reflects this attribute.
In sources and links are a really interesting document if you are looking for activities to teach/learn the IB Profile for your IB course. And, remember, if you have new activities not listed in the document share with the community.
Have you made a poster about the IB Profile in your class and want to share it out? Contact us ;)

If you are looking for activities in Spanish to work along with IB posters check this post.


Do you want to know more?

Sources and links:

• IB Profile posts in antonioluna.org
• IBLP collaborative document
• IB Profile in Spanish

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little 

falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Albert Einstein

Lunaprofe 12/12/2014  No comment

Y10 IGCSE

Good morning!
My name is Antonio Luna and today I am going to be your Spanish teacher.

I hope you enjoy this lesson.
aThank you for your attention and do not hesitate to ask any questions or ask for any clarification during the lesson.

Lunaprofe 12/10/2014  No comment

"Pirates" tongue twisters: "RRRR"

Tongue twisters are really useful when learning a second language. They help you out with your pronunciation, you have fun while practicing them...
Tongue twisters are linguistic tools to improve on our pronunciation but at the same time are cultural snapshots from the target language as well. 
They are a tool for improving our sounds in the language we are studying and develop fluency. They work really well because the stress bar is set really low when practicing a tongue twister. 
In our minds they are link to our childhood when we were practicing tongue twisters in our Primary/Elementary School, at home with our parents or challenging our friends to see who could say it faster and correct.
Just because all these you should consider including tongue twisters in your language class.

A potential activity you can do with this visual resource is to have your students recording one of these three tongue twisters focused on "r" sound. Sometimes doing this a student realize how much progress he/she is making and is a good push for his/her motivation and/or can identify better what he/she needs to work on.

Some more possible activities you can do in class are:

• Start reading aloud a simple tongue twister slow. For instance: cuchara, cucharita, cucaracha.
• You can add words with similar sound to make it more difficult to say it.
• You can propose to your class to look for words that has a similar sound and make a class tongue twister.
• Practice tongue twisters speeding them up little by little. Try this one about tongue twisters:

El trabalenguas del trabalenguas

Si al pronunciar te trabas con las palabras,

practica con trabalenguas,

porque trabalenguando, trabalenguando,

te irás destrabalenguando.

Want to know more about tongue twisters? Check this post!

• Tongue Twisters: a funny resource to learn a language 

You can never be overdressed or overeducated

Oscar Wilde

Lunaprofe 12/08/2014  No comment

Noun gender in Spanish: Special rules [compilation]

We know that life is not that easy as we learn a rule and everything works just great. We know it's a little bit more difficult than that and so are languages. 
We've seen in previous posts some interesting tips and rules to learn the noun gender in Spanish, but still we'll find more nouns ending in a different letter that doesn't apply to any of those. Now it is the time to get a little deeper into it. Everything in a language has a reason to be, but we don't need to explore all of them to learn basic Spanish.
The poster attached to this post is a simple summary of special rules applying to noun gender in Spanish, but to make them more accessible to our students we can work with it in different ways (to diversify is always a great choice).

We can group them by gender, like:

Generally, a noun is masculine in Spanish if it ends in:

• - o: el 
• - or: el amor, el olor, el dolor, el amargor, el anterior, el sabor, el ardor...
• - aje: el coraje, el paisaje, el garaje, el masaje, el mestizaje, el dopaje... 
• - ema: el problema, el tema, el lexema, el esquema, el poema, el sistema...

Regularly, a noun is feminine in Spanish if it ends in:

• - a: la casa, la almohada, la aceitera, la anchura, la daga, la 
• - dad: la normalidad, la ciudad, la verdad, la cavidad, la nulidad, la disponibilidad, la diversidad, la deportividad, la exclusividad...
• - tad: la libertad, la amistad, la lealtad, la tempestad, la pubertad, la facultad, la voluntad, la enemistad, la deslealtad, la majestad...

We can also give our students a list of nouns and ask them to group them by masculine or feminine in two different columns:

tema, mano, masaje, olor, árbol, amistad, canción, igualdad, libertad, problema, radio, garaje, amor, función, maternidad, lealtad, día, moto, peaje, sabor, condición, nocturnidad, mitad, sofá, foto, paisaje, error, formación, paternidad

Masculine nouns	Feminine nouns
el error	la paternidad

Check with this "The odd one out" [in Spanish: encuentra al intruso] your understanding of what we have been talking about:

Check your answers

Children must be taught HOW TO THINK,

not what to think.

Margaret Mead

Lunaprofe 12/05/2014  No comment

Noun gender in Spanish: General rule

To know the gender of the nouns in Spanish is crucial because all articles, adjectives, pronouns... need to agree with the noun in gender when you are making a sentence.
Also, in terms of agreement, the masculine noun goes with El and the feminine noun goes with La, like in 

El libro / La hoja 

[We are always talking about the singular form]

We already talked about an acronym than can help us remembering which ones are masculine and feminine: LONERS. This is certainly a very useful tool to learn this important concept when learning Spanish, but as we always say there are no magic tricks when learning languages but there are patterns that can help us in the process.
The most general rule is simple and easy as you can see in the poster we present in this post. 

• masculine nouns end in -o
• feminine nouns end in -a

Masculine nouns	Feminine nouns
El perro	La perra
El gato	La gata
El niño	La niña
El chico	La chica
El abuelo	La abuela
El tío	La tía
El primo	La prima
El nieto	La nieta
El sobrino	La sobrina
El cuñado	La cuñada

Do this online activity to check if you understood what we talked about:
Check your answers ;)

Related posts:

• An acronym to learn noun genders: LONERS

Education is not the learning of facts,

but the training of the mind to think.

Albert Einstein

Lunaprofe 12/01/2014  No comment

Learn Spanish free: Aula de español

This is one of these pearls you find in the internet thanks to altruism and people that really love what they do. 
You will find 8 complete units for "emergent communicators" (A level for CEFR) with everything you need to learn/teach them.
Topics are (click on the link to see the unit):

• Mis primeros días
• En la escuela
• Mi casa
• Mi familia
• Las compras
• Por la calle
• La salud
• El trabajo

All units are totally interactive and divided in four sub-categories. It also provides an orientation and unit planners for teachers. The site is plenty of "match them up", language games, fill in the blanks and different types of activities like dialogues, grammar, verbs or vocabulary.

Definitely, if you are looking for a resource to learn Spanish independently or resources for your Spanish classes, support for you students at home, complimentary activities... this is one of the best sites to visit.

Visit the website clicking here

A man without education

is like a building without foundation.

Anonymous

Lunaprofe 11/28/2014  No comment

An acronym to learn noun gender: LONERS

I know simplification can be a problem if we don't understand what it is and everything it comes with it... but if we truly understand that simplification doesn't mean we are going to live in a perfect world and we still have to face trouble because of the exceptions... can be a great tool to work with and can be very beneficial for our students.
This poster strives to be a colorful resource to remember our acronym: LONERS for masculine nouns in Spanish and also provides examples for each ending. 
Matching colors are a great strategy for visual learners to remember things. 

Try yourself out with this activity below to see if you internalize this concept:


Let's recap:

If a word ends in l,o,n,e,r,s it's almost always going to be a masculine word in Spanish.

Remember: in language there are no rules without exceptions ;)

If this works for you don't hesitate to use it, share it or print it out;)

More related resources:

• Short, simple and clear explanation [Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition]
• A Wikibook [A brief explanation with tables]

Don't put a limit on anything.

The more you dream, the farther you get.

Michael Phelps

22 medals

Lunaprofe 11/24/2014  No comment

Expressions in Spanish: Empezar la casa por el tejado

I want this post to be simple, because simplicity is a hard goal to pursue ;)
You will find: 

1. Resources to learn/review/teach this expression in Spanish
2. A visual resource to provide your students with
3. A beautiful "pop" song in Spanish on this topic to practice pronunciation and see the expression in context.
4. An informative article about economical crisis using this expression in context too.

The context this expression normally can be found is when you realize you haven't done something well form the beginning or when you want to give this type of advice to somebody you see he/she is doing something all the way around he/she should be doing it.

If you want more expressions in Spanish click here

Want to know more?

• Spanish song from "Fito y Fitipaldis" to practice "empezar la casa por el tejado" [Youtube]
• Podcast in Spanish about "empezar la casa por el tejado" [Spanishpodcast]
• "La casa por el tejado" artículo periodístico sobre la crisis económica [Huffington Post]

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

Victor Hugo

Lunaprofe 11/22/2014  No comment

Past tense contrast in Spanish: a brief explanation with examples. Guest post

This is the first guest post in my blog. 
I'm so excited about it! Thanks Ana!
Our buddy blogger Ana brings us an explanation with examples and very interesting tips on when to use perfecto or indefinido and interesting input about different usage within different varieties of the Spanish language. 

LOS USOS DEL PASADO EN ESPAÑOL

El uso de los pasados en español puede resultar confuso para los estudiantes. Aquí tenemos un ejemplo del uso simultáneo de los tres pasados simples en un diálogo cotidiano, corto y sencillo:

A: Hola, vecino. ¿Otra vez por aquí? No te he visto este verano, ¿te has  ido de vacaciones? 

B: Sí, fui/ he ido a hacer un tour por Asia. Estuve sobre todo en  Vietnam.

A: ¡Qué suerte! ¿Y te ha gustado?

B: Sí.  Es precioso, pero hacía mucho calor.

Consejo:
El truco está en relacionar las  acciones pasadas no con  el tiempo real, puesto que todas las acciones  surgieron en el pasado, sino en cómo relaciona y asocia esa  acción consigo mismo y con el relato el narrador. 

Utilizamos el pretérito perfecto para relacionar los hechos pasados que el narrador asocia  con el tiempo / realidad presente. Para ello, nos puede dar algunas pistas en el diálogo (siempre, nunca, este verano, etc.), aunque no es necesario.

Ejemplo: ¿te has  ido de vacaciones? ¿Y Te ha gustado?

Hay que detallar aquí que  es correcto e intercambiable en algunas partes de España y variedades latinoamericanas  usar el pretérito indefinido: 
¿Te fuiste de vacaciones? ¿Te gustó?

El locutor narra los hechos  sin relacionarlos con el momento presente: Para ello, también nos puede dar alguna pista (ayer, el fin de semana pasado, la semana pasada, el lunes, un día, el 4 de octubre de 1977, etc.), aunque tampoco es necesario.

Ejemplo: Estuve sobre todo en  Vietnam.

El narrador lo utiliza para dar el trasfondo o contexto a los hechos pasados (así es como los ve él en relación a la historia que esta contando), independientemente de que estos se hayan narrado en indefinido o perfecto.

Ejemplo: (…) hacía mucho calor. 

Ana Belén Merlo Ormeño

Aquí puedes consultar su blog ;)
http://amaelespanol.blogspot.com/

Lunaprofe 11/17/2014  No comment

IB Profile: Reflective

Hi there!
Today I want to share a contribution from one of my students. Miguel Dao loves computers and graphic design, he is very creative as you can see in the poster. Thanks Miguel for doing this awesome visual resource and sharing with everyone.
Miguel is taking Spanish ab Initio and he is a great example of what an IB student must be.
The poster includes:

• A definition of the attribute in Spanish 
• A representative celebrity that constantly shows this IB profile attribute
• An example of the concept

Double thumbs-up for him and his work ;) 


Check your answers here ;)

Sources and links:

• IB Profile posts in antonioluna.org
• IBLP collaborative document
• IB Profile in Spanish

Lunaprofe 11/11/2014  No comment

Spanish B Unit: Hambruna y pobreza

I am going to start this post with a quote from a really inspiring person: George Bernard Shaw.

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea an we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

I really agree with this thought. We need to be able to open our classes and our minds to others, especially among teachers, so we can all move up together. Open doors can make a difference in our lives. Nobody is perfect and no-one should expect that from others.

In this post you will find all resources you need to do this unit with your IB Spanish SL class. If you think something can be improved, you have materials/resources than can be used along with this unit and/or you are missing something on this list, please let me know.


Unit's resources:

• Essential questions
• Unit planner [coming soon]
• Vocabulary [Quizlet]
• Texto A: Erradicar la pobreza [pdf]
• Texto B: Producción colectiva para salir de la pobreza [pdf]
• Texto C: Índice de pobreza multidimensional [pdf]
• Texto D: Conexión entre calentamiento global y hambruna [pdf]
• Crossword: Hambruna y pobreza [pdf]
• Formative assessment on Texto A [google form]
• Formative assessment on unit's vocabulary [google form]
• Summative assessment on Reading comprehension (Paper 1) [google form]

Let's your students practice what they've learned playing this crossword with key vocabulary related to the unit:

Lunaprofe 11/09/2014  2 comments

Language games (I)

Just a simple idea: games are fun and can be educative. 
Not because our students are playing games are necessarily learning. There are some controversial opinions out there about this educational approach.
I, personally, prefer "real" games, like "old" games as word-games, or some sort of game that involves hands-on, logic... because we can work through more angles and bring different skills to our class.

Also, timing is crucial for implementing games in our classes. The person that knows better your class is you. So, make some time to think about when this activity fits better within your class time. 
A few tips to take into consideration:
- games are great to be used as "transitions" if they are quick and students understand clearly the directions [you might want to spend some time practicing with your students before letting them rule the game]
- games work just beautiful at the end of class
- a good idea can be to give your students a grade [extra-points can be considered for this] for the game. This always motivates some students.

Today I want to share with you this simple but very effective language game. 

El padre de Ana tiene cinco hijas, que son: Nana, Nene, Nini, Nono. 

¿Cómo se llama la quinta hija? 

Through this simple sentence we are lighting up our students imagination, their capacity to develop critical thinking, logical thinking, curiosity...
We are encouraging them to think about the language itself (metacognition) and taking ownership of their discoveries. In the end, they have fun doing these easy brainteasers. To develop their prediction capacity, their guessing ability will help them a lot in their future real life situations.

Another classic language game is make students say or write a word starting for the same letter than the previous one ends. 
You organize your students in a circle, the first student says a word in the target language and the next has to come up with a word beginning with the last letter of the previous word.
Example: estudiar-risa-árbol-leer-ratón-nadar-...

Want more games? Check this fabulous website with 47 language games for learning a foreign language.

Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.

George Washington Carver

Sources:

Squire, K.D. (2002). Rethinking the role of games in Education. Game Studies, 2(1)

Squire, K. (2003). Video games in education. International Journal of Intelligent Simulations and Gaming (2) 1.

Do Your Players Know Their Role? - What Games Are, August, 2011

Lunaprofe 11/06/2014  No comment

IB Profile: Communicators

Nothing makes me prouder [as a teacher] than seeing my students making progress and doing a better job than my own work. 
Today I want to share a piece of work made by my students, a poster made by my skillful "chic@s": Valentina, Oscar y Santiago as a part of an in-class activity. I think the image talks by itself and summarize the concept of being a good communicator but just in case, they added:

• Definition 
• A representative celebrity that constantly shows this IB profile attribute
• An example of the concept

Double thumbs-up for them and their work ;) 


Check your answers here ;)

Interested in IBLP? Check this post

Lunaprofe 11/01/2014  No comment

Learn Spanish with movies: El hijo de la novia

Why movies?

1. Movies are something our students like. At least, they like the format. They are familiarized with them. They probably go to the movies on the weekends with their friends. 
2. The movies are primary sources for the language. The language our students are exposed through the movies is a native language, produced for/to native speakers.
3. The language in the movies is real. We will find a lot of authentic registers [poor people talking slang, rich people using a very sophisticated speech...] to work with.
4. With the right activities (pre-comprehension, ...) movies are not a passive activity but a really "active" activity in our class.
5. Movies are visual. It is a visual format we (pretty much all) are familiarized with it.
6. Movies are a huge "exposition" of the target culture. It depends on the movie but lots of them can help us bring up to the table interesting debates/discussions about cultural topics.
7. Movies stimulate creativity.
8. Movies develop our students capacity of analysis from different points of view.

A possible sequence to consider for planning purpose:

- Before the movie:

• Glossary
• Pre-comprehension activities [Anticipation]

-During the movie:

• notes
• comments
• answers
• quotes
• words lists

- After the movie:

• level-targeted tasks

Sequence based on Martha Florez

In this case, I propose a movie about rethinking our paths through life. The movie also expose us to a good dose of reality. Read the full review in IMDB or in BBC Reviews

It is interesting how many different types of text we can work with our students through movies. We can practice producing a review, a summary, descriptions of characters, dialogues/conversations, informal letter, email, interview, article... 

Ficha técnica de la película:

Título: El hijo de la novia

Dirección: Juan José Campanella

País: Argentina

Año: 2001

Fecha de estreno: 23/11/2001

Duración: 123 minutos

Género: Drama, Comedia.

Reparto: Ricardo Darín, Héctor Alterio, Norma Aleandro, Eduardo Blanco, Natalia Verbeke, Gimena Nóbile, David Masajnik, Claudia Fontán, Atilio Pozzobon, Salo Pasik

Productora: Patagonik Film Group, Tornasol Films, JEMPSA, Pol-Ka Producciones

Possible activities are listed below with worksheets and print outs. Enjoy!

Sources and resources:

• El cine, un recurso didáctico. El hijo de la novia. [Celia Carracedo Manzanera]
• El cine en la clase de ELE: El hijo de la novia [Josefa Álvarez Valadés & María Luisa Gómez Sacristán]
• Estrategias para desarrollar diferentes tipos de textos a través de las películas [Martha Flórez]

“Accordingly, globalization is not only something that will

concern and threaten us in the future, but something

that is taking place in the present and to which we must

first open our eyes.”

Ulrich Beck (German Sociologist; b. 1944)

Lunaprofe 10/27/2014  No comment

Criterios de evaluación para el trabajo escrito. Español BI NM.

En estos tiempos la Organización del Bachillerato Internacional está viviendo un momento muy intenso, un tiempo de cambio en el que hay muchas actualizaciones y a los profesores que trabajamos con estos programas nos cuesta estar al día con todas las modificaciones que se introducen. Por eso, me he propuesto hacer esta entrada para recoger las últimas actualizaciones y explicar como funcionan y expresar mi opinión. Esta entrada va dirigida a los sufridos profesores de español del BI y a los alumnos [no menos sufridos :P]

¿Cómo van a ser evaluados los trabajos escritos de nuestros alumnos? [Guía de lengua B, 2015]

La puntuación máxima del trabajo escrito es de 24 puntos y supone el 20% de la nota final del alumno.
El trabajo escrito tiene que estar conectado/relacionado con los temas troncales [Problemas globales, relaciones sociales y medios de comunicación], tiene que tener una extensión de entre 300 y 400 palabras más una fundamentación de 150 a 200 palabras. 
¡Ojo! ¡Cuidado con el número de palabras, porque se tendrá en cuenta negativamente si escribe más y también menos de lo requerido. Además si escribe más palabras de lo estipulado sólo se tendrán en cuenta para la evaluación el número de palabras máximo permitido.

A continuación presentamos una serie de preguntas que nos ayudarán a centrar el trabajo de nuestros alumnos para alcanzar la máxima puntuación en cada criterio:

Criterio A: Fundamentación y tarea [10 puntos]
Preguntas:

• ¿En qué medida el alumno utiliza la fundamentación y la tarea para completar el trabajo escrito?
• ¿En qué medida la tarea se presenta con claridad en la fundamentación?
• ¿En qué medida la tarea aborda satisfactoriamente el tema, y el o los objetivos que se indican en la fundamentación?
• ¿En qué medida es apropiada la elección del tipo de texto para la tarea?

Otra forma de enfocar esta parte y de ayudar a nuestros alumnos [y a nosotros mismos] a entender mejor la tarea es prestar atención a los siguientes puntos:

• ¿Qué?
• ¿Cómo?
• ¿Por qué?
• ¿Organización?
• ¿Cumplimiento de los objetivos?
• ¿uso de las convenciones/formato específico?

Criterio B: Organización y desarrollo [6 puntos]

Preguntas:

• ¿En qué medida las ideas están organizadas y desarrolladas?

Criterio C: Lengua [8 puntos]

Preguntas:

• ¿En qué medida utiliza el alumno la lengua de forma apropiada y eficaz en relación con la tarea?

¿Quieres saber más?

• Explicación en la página web de IBO
• Ejemplo de un trabajo escrito de un alumno
• Evaluación del trabajo escrito [IBO]
• Trabajo escrito: la fundamentación [Antonio Luna]

Nunca consideres el estudio como una obligación, sino como una oportunidad para penetrar en el bello y maravilloso mundo del saber.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Lunaprofe 10/25/2014  No comment

Specific vocabulary: Internet

Hello all again!
Today I want to share a couple of images containing specific basic vocabulary to use on a daily basis: Internet. 
I know it sounds too easy but I have found out that sometimes this is that obvious that it doesn't get covered in any Spanish class. 
When can this specific vocabulary comes in handy?
The first time I realized the importance of it we were going through a web quest for my Spanish class. One of the requirements for my students were to cite their sources and they all turn to me when they reached that point of the task. 

Yes, our students usually have to cite their sources for their projects/essays... and nowadays almost every single source is on line, so that is what they use it. Therefore if we want our students to be ready for that we need to teach them this essential vocabulary.
I hope these two visuals come in handy to use them for your classes and also feel free to take the brief quiz below to check if you already mastered this specific vocabulary.

Check your answers here ;)

“Five years from now on the Web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world. 

It will be better than any single university.”

– Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft (2010)

Want to expand your knowledge?

• Vocabulary list in English and Spanish
• Computer and Internet words
• A comprehensive list with audio

Lunaprofe 10/21/2014  No comment

False friends English-Spanish (I)

False friends are pairs of words in two languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. 
They are like people you thought they were your real friends and when you needed them they weren't there for you. We don't like them!
When learning languages you have to go through this process as well, like in your real life. You have to be able to identify your real friends [cognates] from your false friends ;)
You don't want to make "embarrassing" ("embarazada" actually means "pregnant" in Spanish) comments... so, take a look to them from time to time and don't let them confuse you.

Check your answers

“Any teacher that can be replaced with a computer, deserves to be.” 

– David Thornburg

Sources:

• Definition  [Wikipedia]
• Definición [Wikipedia]
• Top ten funniest false friends [The Local]
• Glossary of false friends [Wiktionary]

Lunaprofe 10/17/2014  4 comments

Expressions in Spanish: Ser un pez gordo

To learn idiomatic expressions in the target language is essential because native speakers do use them all the time. 
Expressions are used in formal and informal speech. 
A language learner that is using expressions transmits certain information about him/her that is implied. Students communicating effectively with expressions show a deeper understanding of the language and also of the target culture.
For showing our proficiency in a language. Once you have mastered a certain number of expressions and include them in your interactions you are ready to go beyond the language borders.

Check your answers ;)

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

Aristotle

Lunaprofe 10/14/2014  No comment

Language through content: Geography

This is a trend we must consider when teaching/learning languages. Go a little bit further and offer something else than just the language. You'll get impress by your students response(if they like the topic chosen).
This is one of the sequences we do in class:

1. Try a website focused in a particular area of knowledge (in my case Geography)
2. Related vocabulary (Geography) + Locations (Ser/Estar) 
3. Useful patterns: questions 
• ¿Dónde está____?
• ¿En qué continente está _____(país o capital/ciudad)____?
• ¿Cuál es la capital de ____(país)____?
4. Help them understand how do you use a question to build up your answer:
• ¿Cuál es la capital de Chile?
• La capital de Chile es Santiago de Chile.
5. Work with them the cardinal points:
• Sur
• Norte
• Este
• Oeste
6. This is an excellent opportunity to learn and practice the seasons:
• Invierno
• Verano
• Primavera
• Otoño
7.  Help them understand we have different ways of naming geographical positions and explore with them the origin of these words helping them understand the roots of the language and some reasons/logic of the Spanish language:
• Oriente
• Occidente
• Meridional
• Septentrional
8. On a cultural note, I bring up some shocking topics:
•  How many continents are out there? Explore with them this concept in English and Spanish and the origin and the consequences of it. Talk about the different approaches: geographical or cultural. I also make a connection with the notion of being open minded.
• Help them understand the logo of ANOC and reason the causes.
• Names of capitals: do we translate them or not? all? why?

Further reading:

• http://www.juegos-geograficos.com
• Image's source 

Lunaprofe 10/08/2014  No comment