ab Initio Unit: Empleo

This topic is easy to find in a lot of curriculums worldwide as well.
Jobs, employment, professions are easy to link with more units and easy to incorporate into your Individual Oral exam.
As an example in the online activities presented below we've linked jobs with objects and places so students can learn/practice "estar" for locations, descriptions for objects, uses of objects, etc.

In this unit you will find:
- vocabulary (Quizlet)
- some online activities to internalize this vocabulary and structures
- a memory game to play with the whole class and practice sentences
- a Paper 1 (reading comprehension activity (listen to the recording first) to check on your learning of the topic
- a Paper 2 (Writing) related to employment

But first things first, let's learn some Vocabulary playing on Quizlet.

Actividades en línea

Juega a encontrar las parejas

- Divide la clase en equipos [normalmente de 4 miembros]

- Para ganar un punto hay que encontrar dos imágenes iguales y después usar la palabra en una oración correctamente.

- Al terminar la partida actualiza tu navegador y aparecerán tarjetas con imágenes nuevas.

Comprensión lectora = Prueba 1

Puedes escuchar el texto para prestar atención a los sonidos y después leerlo tranquilamente. Cuando estés lista/o responde a las preguntas.

Título: Las 20 carreras con mayor futuro laboral
Autor: Universia España	Fuente: Universia España
Estados Unidos ha estimado cuáles serán las carreras de mayor demanda en el mercado laboral hasta 2022. En el listado se destacan las relacionadas con salud, tecnologías, economía y educación. En esta nota te presentamos las 20 carreras con mayor futuro laboral. Si estás pensando qué estudiar y temes elegir una carrera poco rentable, considera el nuevo listado de profesiones con mayor futuro laboral elaborado por el Departamento de Trabajo de Estados Unidos. El ranking de las 20 carreras de mayor futuro contempla la evolución del mercado laboral norteamericano y de los perfiles laborales que más han crecido en los últimos años y lo seguirán haciendo de aquí a 2022. Este ranking sirve a los estudiantes para elegir la carrera adecuada, pero también a los universitarios para saber cómo orientar su futuro profesional. Además, incluye carreras universitarias pero también oficios como carpintero o chofer, con lo que garantiza que el empleo no se concentrará solo en un sector sino que variará de uno a otro. Dentro de los criterios para elaborar las proyecciones, el Departamento de Trabajo ha considerado las estimaciones de demanda laboral entre 2012 y 2022 y el salario medio para cada puesto de trabajo. Así obtienen una predicción acerca de las expectativas de futuro de las profesiones.	Estas son las carreras con mayor futuro: 1. Enfermería 2. Director de operaciones 3. Desarrollador de aplicaciones de software 4. Especialistas en Medicina y Cirugía 5. Auditores técnicos y contables 6. Consultores de dirección 7. Analistas de sistemas y programadores 8. Profesores de educación infantil 9. Carpinteros 10. Abogados 11. Jefes de Administración 12. Desarrolladores de sistemas de software 13. Analista de investigación de mercado / Especialista en Marketing 14. Capataz de obra 15. Auxiliar de Enfermería 16. Conductor de camión 17. Trabajadores contables 18. Representantes de ventas 19. Doctores 20. Ingenieros técnicos de obras civiles Palabras: 210

Escribe y practica todo lo que has aprendido

More resources:

• Reading Comprehension: Busco trabajo [pdf]
• Reading Comprehension: Anuncios periódicos [pdf]

Lunaprofe 9/12/2017  No comment

ab Initio Unit: Salud

There are a million resources out there created by engaged and super motivated teachers to help us out in our classes. Sometimes I love spending time creating my own resources, to me it's the easiest and most convenient for my own classes as I can individualize and personalize my resources for my students, but also, we all have to admit that we don't have the necessary time to create or review all of our resources. Precisely then is when I use external resources, but remember if you want to make it right, make sure you cite/mention the original source of the activity or resource you are using.
This topic, Health, appears in all of the IB courses, ab Initio and Standard Level and HL.
Regarding the IB Profile and connections with this unit, we can clearly make a connection with the attribute balanced. In order to be healthy we have to be balanced, for instance with our diet. Nutrition and diet units are perfect to be taught within this topic.

Through Quizlet you can learn all vocabulary you need for this unit. Give it a try and remember that you can use it as flashcards, match, games (gravity), learn, etc. just clicking on the right corner at the bottom. 



On this online presentation you can find instructions and activities to teach/learn this unit:

Resources:

• Kahoot: Salud
• Online interactive Unit: La salud [Junta de Andalucía]
• Teacher's booklet [pdf]
• Student's booklet [pdf]
• Images [pdf]
• Actividad: Consejos para la salud [languagesonline]
• Actividad: Estoy enfermo [languagesonline]
• Ejercicio: Manchas de la piel [Vertaal]
• Ejercicio: En el consultorio [mhhe]
• Crossword: Enfermedades [Vertaal]
• Wordsearch: El dentista [jpg]
• Dialogue: Medicinas [jpg]
• Text + activities: La consulta del médico [Prof. Hamid Elmniai]
• Partes del cuerpo [Luna profe]
• Idioms related to Health [doc]

One more visual activity to review common mistakes and reflective verbs with vocabulary related to Health:

If you need to review the body parts for this unit, click here.

Related links:

• Body parts in Spanish
• IB Spanish SL Unit: Hombre precavido

The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas. George Santayana

Lunaprofe 5/22/2017  No comment

Las partes del cuerpo

This is a must in every beginners course. The body parts, there are million materials out there to teach them. I always have liked the visual ones.
First, try clicking on the hotspots on this image and learning the different parts of the body in Spanish. When you click on one, a pop up will come up using the body part in a sentence to help you understand a bit better what it is and how to use it in Spanish.


I've put together this memory card game to learn/review the body parts in Spanish. When you play you are just using 6 different cards but there are a lot more available, just refresh your browser and new cards will come up on a new game.

More resources:

• Une la palabra con la imagen [jpg]

The one real object of education is

to have a man in the condition of

continually asking questions

Mandell Creighton

Lunaprofe 5/10/2017  5 comments

Using technologies to enhance interactive learning: Edpuzzle

This is a Spanish interactive visual activity I've created for an IB unit. I found out about Edpuzzle last year, since then, I have been using it with amazing results in my class. You can just copy and paste and URL from a YouTube video and make it interactive for your language class.
You can make multiple-choice questions, open-ended, comments and also record your own voice making a question/explanation on a particular action on the video or just clarifying something that was on the video. 
Believe me, it is real simple to use, if I can use it everyone can.
This activity has been designed to introduce the concept of old technologies and get perspective on how unknown are for new generations.
At the same time the students will work through different structures and skills like comparing, justifying their opinions or using patterns to learn or practice subjunctive along with conditional.
I like to start units making predictions, and for that, we use the image on this post comparing a type writer and a laptop to make students wander about the theme of the unit. They make predictions on how the unit is going to look like, what the topic is going to be, what grammar topics are going to be covered, which verb tenses are going to be used...
Before watching the video we do this activity to activate prior knowledge introducing the unit along with essential questions to inspire, motivate and make them start thinking about the unit.

Find below some activities to use along with this video:
- Pre-activity for the video [pdf]
- Writing skills [pdf] 

Some skills that can be develop with this activity are:

Skills:  comparar / pretérito imperfecto / perfecto / indefinido / condicional

[if you click on this keywords you'll get to my GDrive where you will find varied materials/resources to learn/practice these skills]

Fact: Using videos along with EDpuzzle super-powers to engage students improve their grades by 17%!

Learning is not a spectator sport.

Anonymous

Lunaprofe 11/02/2015  3 comments

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

False friends in Spanish (II)

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 from your false friends ;)
You don't want to make embarrassing (embarazada it actually means pregnant in Spanish) comments... so, take a look to them from time to time and don't let you be misunderstood.
Get ready for next stage, practice a little bit with the following sentences:

	introduzca
¡Qué casualidad! Estábamos hablando de ti, déjame que te		a Lidia.
	presente

sensible  Mi hermana es una persona muy  sensata
apoyado  Siempre he  al Málaga, no soy ningún chaquetero.  soportado
recordar  El nuevo proyecto de la clase de español consiste en  una canción de Enrique Iglesias.  grabar

Sources:

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

Lunaprofe 5/27/2015  2 comments

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