Bellwork

Bellwork is just an activity that students complete as they walk into the class before the bell rings for the lesson. 

That's the definition, but we don't need to be that strict when doing bellwork in our classes. Actually, there are activities in this bellwork presentation that will last 10 minutes, that will have a different impact in your instruction time depending on how long your classes are or any other factors. 

Anyways, the idea behind our bellwork activities is that our students are engaged as soon as they walked into your classroom and (hopefully;) focused on the subject. 

Different light: use these activities as an exit ticket from your class, or as flexible homework, or as enrichment, sub-plans, or ... 

It is impossible for a man to learn

what he thinks he already knows

Epictetus

Lunaprofe 1/15/2018  7 comments

¿Qué hora es?

Telling the time in Spanish is just one more thing we need to teach, no matter which curriculum you are following, at early stages.
After several years bringing in materials to class and checking them with my students I've put together this post compiling everything you need for these classes.
One thing I've learnt over the years is that the more times you re-visit something the easier for your students to internalize the content. Telling the time is one of those things you can find everywhere, and so, it should be something you re-visit every single class. Also, you can review it integrating the time into different activities.
For instance, to check understanding on my students we do an activity call Tuitea tu clase, I usually do it once a week in my class and is perfect to combine it with reviewing the time in Spanish, give it a try and let me know how it goes.
This presentation you find below has explanations, videos and activities to check if your students have learnt the time in Spanish, and at the end even give your total score in percentage, so I tell my students to do it individually and use it as a class grade. Easy, simple and effective ;)


More resources:

• American Comedy ¿Qué hora es? [youtube]
• Tuitea tu clase [pdf]

It is a beautiful thing when a career

and a passion come together

Lunaprofe 3/27/2017  No comment

ab Initio Unit: Educación

This unit is perfect for making connections to the rest of the themes in your ab Initio course.
For example, we can talk or connect education and sports, global issues, time, geography, physical descriptions, character, nationalities, etc.

Attention: The recorder for the IO just works on Mozilla Firefox.

We learn about education in Spanish through a Power Point. This is our main document with links to activities, questions, visuals, etc.
It is advisable to start introducing, at least, some vocabulary related to the unit, for that, you can use the flashcards below:

 

Presentations:

- La escuela [pdf]

- ¿Qué hora es? [interactive online]
- ¿A qué hora es? [interactive online]
- Individual Oral resources for Educación [web]

Activities:

• Internal Assessment on Education [web]
• Kahoot: 
• Cosas que hay en la escuela [web]
• Un día en la escuela [web]
• La escuela y el trabajo [web]
• Cosas que encuentras en la escuela [web]
• ¿Cómo es la escuela a la que vas? [pdf]
• ¿Cuántas nacionalidades hay en tu escuela? [conexiones: educación/relaciones/geografía] [pdf]
• Gerundios locos en la escuela [pdf]
• Actividad oral sobre las clases [pdf]
• Vocabulario + Mini-investigación [pdf]
• Hablar de horarios [CVC]
• Unidad didáctica interactiva "La escuela" [Junta de Andalucía]
• Cuaderno del alumno [pdf]

Individual Oral:

Choose one visual stimulus from below and spend 15 min preparing for your oral exam. Remember that you just can take with you 10 concepts=key words=phrases and that you are not allowed to read them during your exam.

Idea: you have the pictures here, why don't practicing a bit at home or in your free time?

Remember that for learning to happen we need attention, we need your attention. In order to boost up your attention you might want to connect any topic you are studying to personal experiences, beliefs, find practical applications, share it with your family, talk with your friends about what you are currently learning, find a buddy that can explain what you don't understand, etc.

Education is a journey not a race

Steiner

Lunaprofe 3/20/2017  1 comment

Writing visual activities to get started with paper 2 in ab Initio

We, teachers, know that abInitio is a tough course and we are always looking for new ways of helping our students to rush through the syllabus. 
I found this activity great to help my students to develop their writing skills at the very beginning, scaffolding them with visuals to come up with a story. But also works great with more advanced students to help them develop more creativity in their tasks.

Remember that is also crucial that all your writing activities involve text types format, as it is taking into account when it comes to grading.

Ab Initio paper 2 resources
El individuo y la sociedad	Trabajo y ocio	El medio urbano y rural
Comida y bebida	Deportes	Cuestiones globales
Compras	Empleo	El barrio
Datos personales, apariencia y carácter	Entretenimiento	Geografía física
Educación	Medios de comunicación	La ciudad y sus servicios
Relaciones	Tecnología	Problemas ambientales
Rutinas diarias	Transporte	Tiempo meteorológico
Salud física	Vacaciones

All images used are from http://publicdomainvectors.org/, if you are looking for free images to use in your classes, I highly recommend this site, it is awesome!

Too often we give children answers to remember

rather than problems to solve

Roger Lewin

Lunaprofe 3/06/2017  No comment

Encuentros multiculturales: Pedir la vez o a la vez

La multiculturalidad o interculturalidad es un concepto que nosotros, como profesores (aún más los que nos trabajamos en escuelas internacionales) tenemos la oportunidad de compartir con nuestros estudiantes. Abrirles una puerta al mundo, a como funciona, lo diferentes que somos, como nos podemos comprender mejor...
Esta historia la encontré en Acuerdo Intercultural y me pareció fantástica para ayudar a mis estudiantes a comprender un poco mejor como algo tan rutinario y simple como hacer la compra se puede convertir en algo muy complicado si no sabes las normas culturales y los comportamientos sociales que usa la gente.
Como actividad te propongo que leas el texto y respondas a las preguntas a continuación, si quieres puedes encontrar el pdf aquí.

Pedir la vez o a la vez

Cuando llegué a Madrid me sentí muy desubicada porque muchas cosas funcionan de manera diferente que en mi país. Soy de origen Latinoamericano. Para dar un ejemplo, debo mencionar que la primera vez que fui a un supermercado a hacer la compra me encontré con que una mujer mayor me dijo al verme a su lado, y con cara muy seria: “pida la vez”. Yo en mi vida había escuchado aquello que ella decía, no sabía a qué se refería. Así que intenté intuir lo que era, pero no tuve suerte.  Esperé a que terminara de pedir lo suyo: 100 gramos de mortadela, 250 de chóped, y cuando se calló, yo grite: “y un pollo”, porque pensé, aunque me pareció muy raro que se hiciera así, que pedir la vez podría significar -pedir a la vez con ella-.  Al mismo tiempo.

No creo que tenga que decir con qué cara se giró y me miró. Ni tampoco como me sentí de torpe en ese momento. Tanto que durante varios días estuve dudando acerca de la manera como tenía que empezar a solicitar las cosas en los establecimientos comerciales madrileños si quería conseguir ser entendida. También me invadió por varias semanas la añoranza por la forma diferente como se hacen las solicitudes en el lugar de donde yo vengo. Y no porque allí no exista el turno. Sino porque él mismo lo decide, por lo general, el tendero, según vea las características personales del comprador. Por ejemplo, le otorga la prioridad a personas de la tercera edad, menores, mujeres embarazadas, etc. Y los demás entendemos su proceder porque sabemos que se trata de asuntos de solidaridad, y no de orden de llegada.

Myriam

Preguntas

1. ¿Qué dos culturas están enfrentadas?

2. ¿Qué comprendió Miryam cuando la señora le dijo “pida la vez”? ¿Y qué hizo? ¿Cómo reaccionó la señora?

3. ¿Cómo se sintió Myriam?

4. Piensa por un momento que en lugar de haber cometido un error intercultural, hubiera cometido un error gramatical. ¿Las consecuencias habrían sido las mismas tanto por parte de Myriam como por parte de la señora o de los presentes en la tienda?

5. A continuación, los alumnos tendrán que reflexionar ayudándose del texto acerca de cómo funciona el mecanismo de guardar el turno en algunos lugares de Latinoamérica.

6. Ahora piensa en tu sociedad en general, ¿cómo actúa en un caso similar?¿En tu país, se pide la vez para hacer la cola? ¿Es el dependiente quién decide el turno? ¿Cómo funciona?

Basándote en el texto, completa el cuadro siguiente, indicando a quién o a qué se refieren las palabras subrayadas.

En las expresiones...	la palabra...	se refiere a...
7. me dijo al verme a su lado...	“su”	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8. los demás entendemos su proceder ...	“su”	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9. le otorga la prioridad...	“le”	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10. el mismo lo decide...	“lo”	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11. Resume el texto en 20 palabras máximo:

12. ¿Qué tipo de texto es este? Enumera al menos dos características y explica porqué te has decantado por un tipo de texto y no por otro.

2. 
   

Source: http://www.acuerdointercultural.org/content/view/22/37/

Get the pdf here!

En todas las tierras sale el sol al amanecer

George Herbert

Lunaprofe 2/06/2017  No comment

Activities to learn Spanish: Suffixes

Learning languages is always attached to learning skills, as many other things. Those who follow the IB curriculum have noticed that there are three main skills at beginners / intermediate level:

- describe

- compare

- reflect

Through grammar activities, in this case suffixes, we can help our students to keep building on these three skills. Actually, you can always adapt your activities to do that, but keep in mind to be creative, otherwise your students will fall into a sleepy routine.

Check the resources to get the activities with full instructions.

Developing Mr Lewin's statement a bit more: challenge your students, give them something to think about, let them make mistakes, help them learn from their own mistakes, make connections to different topics/subjects, give them tools to grow rather than just give them information.

These activities can be connected to nationalities if you are working with emergent communicators. 

Do you know the game Hangman? Practice a bit what you've learnt in this post:

Activities:

• Suffixes -oso / -ble [pdf]
• Suffixes -ero / -ista [pdf]
• Suffixes and nationalities [pdf]
• Ejercicios en línea con sufijos [Lingolia]
• Unidad de Anaya sobre sufijos [Junta de Andalucía]
• Graphic organizer: most common suffixes in Spanish [jpg] [Thanks to thelearningpatio.com]

Too often we give children answers to remember

rather than problems to solve

Roger Lewin

Lunaprofe 9/17/2016  No comment

Gerund in Spanish

This is a tough one in Spanish. Most of the times all the mistakes come from transferring the English language into the Spanish one. With this post I am going to try to give a few, simple and direct tips to avoid the incorrect use of this verb form in Spanish for beginners.
First thing we do in my class is using the visual provided here to deduce the rule for gerund in Spanish. Putting this responsibility upon students shoulders is a great strategy to develop autonomy, critical thinking, logical thinking skills. They get used to be detectives in my class. Actually they wear so many different hats in my class, but isn't it real life like that?

One big idea when using gerund in Spanish:

The action expressed by the gerund MUST happen before or at the same time as the action of the main verb, NEVER later

Correct:	Incorrect:
Paco aprende español cantando canciones.	Preguntó al profesor ayudándose de las ayudas visuales.
Thinking activity:  Looking at the first example, when is the action happening? is it previous, simultaneous or later?  In the second example, previous, simultaneous or later?

The following sequences can help us to establish and settle authentic pieces of language highlighting the concept of gerund. Pay attention to how two first sentences get combined into the third one: 

Sequences of gerund:

Llegó muy tarde a clase de español. Pidió permiso para entrar. Llegó muy tarde a clase de español pidiendo permiso para entrar.

Observó atentamente la imagen. Preguntó una duda. Observó atentamente la imagen preguntando una duda.

Quiso aprender español después de la escuela. Preguntó al profesor que podía hacer. Quiso aprender español después de la escuela preguntando al profesor que podía hacer.

Do you want to check if you've learnt something? Yes?
Complete the Google form below

Some of the ideas from this post have been borrowed from Proyecto Aula 

Want to know more?

• Usos del gerundio [Fundación del español urgente]
• El gerundio. Grammar [El juego]
• Continuous tense. Grammar [El juego]
• 7 worksheets [ISL Collective]
• Correct and incorrect use of the gerund [Borradores]
• Intensive grammar [Ministerio de educación]

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest

Benjamin Franklin

Lunaprofe 10/23/2015  1 comment

Stem changing verbs

It is great when you start learning Spanish and you see that all verbs follow the rule... just take away the ending and replace it for the new ones. But we all know that life is not that easy, sometimes out there are always some guys that don't strictly follow the rules, and we are not talking about the rebels (irregular verbs) we are talking about stem changing verbs, they follow some other rules. 
Visuals are great resources to memorize important information and in this particular case we find it really helpful because you can see in just one picture the whole procedure.

If you like learning Spanish with songs this is a modern Spanish song from a Spanish band [Amparanoia] with activities to practice and learn stem changing verbs.

Activity:  A fun activity we do in class is doing the process backwards, we see this visual and students deduce what to do from experience, then they put their theories in practice, check if it works and finally write their conclusions down in their notebooks. Sequence: - show your students the visual to deduce the rules - give them 2 minutes to talk with their partners/teams/groups about it - let them share out with the class what they think they found out - check if their theories are correct - allow them to write down the process and a conclusion [if they have a journal or diary for the class, it would be the perfect place to do this]

Activity


If you are one of my students don't forget to click on "Enviar" to send your funwork.

Want to know more?

• Ven [song in Spanish to practice stem changing verbs] [pdf]
• Power Point activity [Agapito Floriano Lacalle]
• Connecting people and statements activity [Milena Ivanova Koleva]
• Image's source: https://profmargheritaquaglia.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/duermo.png?w=560&h=469

Lunaprofe 10/29/2013  No comment