Tasks by criteria - phase 1

Here, we'll compile assignments, tasks grouped by criteria and topic. Everything you can find in this post is phase or level 1.
If you have materials we can include in this section, do send them through. Remember, if you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange them we just have one apple each, but if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange them we both have two ideas now ;) 

A Comprensión de textos orales y visuales	B Comprensión de textos escritos y visuales
Familia - ¿Cómo es tu familia?	Eco-educación - Beneficios del reciclaje  - Minicuento del reciclaje - Reciclar por colores: separación
Flamenco - La Bienal de Flamenco de Sevilla
Redes sociales - Lo malo de las redes sociales
C Comunicación en respuesta a textos orales, escritos o visuales D Uso de la lengua de forma oral o escrita
Eco-educación - El reciclaje creativo	Alimentación y salud - La Dieta Mediterránea
La ciudad - Compara tu ciudad con una del mundo hispano [C+D]

Lunaprofe 9/25/2016  3 comments

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

Learn Spanish with your phone: Mosalingua

Here we come with another interesting free app to learn Spanish, Mosalingua. 

Mosalingua is an app which learning strategies are based on cognitive principles. 
A fantastic feature you can enjoy with this app is that you can manage your review/revision of the classes taken. They will tell you what are you struggling with and they will tailor a review lesson based on what you had a hard time with while you were learning.

As many others, is very visual and intuitive so you can learn easy from your phone anywhere you go.

If you want to try more apps to learn languages, click here.

Get the app here.

Lunaprofe 9/15/2016  No comment

ab Initio Unit: Geografía

Geography is easy to connect with basic skills we need to develop in a language we are learning. Concepts like where, when, which, what... come up continuously and we can take advantage of these connections to take our students on a wonderful trip through language and content since the beginning of the learning journey.

This unit has been assembled keeping in mind specific ab Initio requirements but it is totally regular Spanish, AP Spanish, MYP... friendly. 


As usual, underneath you will find all you need to teach/learn this unit and as always, if you have anything you think can contribute in any way to this unit, please, send it through ;)

Everything you need: Unit planner [pdf] Essential Questions [pdf] Presentation based on inquiry with activities, explanations, projects, visuals and assessments [pdf] [main document for the unit] Presentation on Capitals of Central America [pdf] Presentation on Spanish-speaking countries [pdf] Interesting questions connecting Geography and Hispanic Culture [pdf] Skills: comparar [web] Map with countries, capitals and locations [pdf] Activity: Countries, capitals and locations [pdf] Oral activity: analyzing data and comparing countries [pdf] ¿Cuántas nacionalidades hay en mi escuela? [pdf] Reading Comprehension activity [pdf] [Paper1] Visual stimulus [Nationalities + Culture]  Benedetti's poem Te quiero [pdf] [Paper 2]

Want to learn more?

• Language through content: Geography [Antonio Luna]
• More Units [Antonio Luna]
• Thanks to Tara, Daphne, Adriano & Daily for working on the vocabulary on Quizlet, you are excellent students!

Teachers who love teaching

teach children to love learning

Lunaprofe 9/12/2016  No comment

Strategies: Diario de aprendizaje

This post is based on the GLAD strategy learning log. I learnt this awesome strategy from my super-pro-colleague, Rhonda and I've been using it since then because it really works to get the students start writing in a second language.
The purpose of this post is to help my students and their families to understand this strategy better.

What it is?

This document is a record of what happens everyday in class and the students personal life. To build up this connection we ask the students to think of something personal to connect to what they have learnt that day. 

Why?

A learning log is useful because it helps the student to keep everything organized, they promote metacognition and help them writing daily in a new language for them keeping the stress bar low. It also helps to create a safe and challenging learning atmosphere.
Because it is a great opportunity to practice the language on a daily basis and connect it to their academic and personal growth. That's why we ask our students to write just in Spanish. The only time they can write in English is when they use their cognates. 

How do we use our Diario de aprendizaje?

If we are familiariazed with patterns then we are all set, if not, a pattern is just a chunk of language that repeats and allows us to scaffold our students to express themselves in another language. For example, we can use the pattern Today I have learnt _____  to help our students express what they learn in class. As the students gain confidence with these strategies we will start moving to a more difficult/different patterns. For instance, we can move from Today I have learnt _____  to We have learnt ________ in Spanish class, offering variety of language to our students, exposing them to different important aspects of the language.

Sequence:

1. Students pay attention to the class and take notes to collect the necessary information.
2. At the end of the class the student spends five minutes writing down in their journals four things they have learnt during that class.
3. He/She connects the learning with his/her own life, through a personal connection.
4. Students need to jot down the date of every single entry in words and in Spanish.
5. Take a look to the visual and/or the pdf if you still have questions on what to do.

Step 2:
Now that the students now the strategy and they are confident enough you can feed them with language maintaining a slow stress class environment. Start changing the patterns like in this document.
Step 3:
Now that students also know that the patterns can change and through them they can learn new vocabulary, expressions, conjugations... change them all and increase the difficulty of them.
Step 4:
In this step we've changed all the patterns considerably and walk our students through a way more challenging task.

You can (should) keep increasing the difficulty of the task and using it to teach/learn language.

Related links:

• Get this strategy on pdf
• Glosario, a GLAD strategy
• Glosario step 2
• Glosario step 3
• Glosario step 4

Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle.

Christian D. Larson

Lunaprofe 9/06/2016  No comment

MYP Rubrics & more

We all have the IB language guides and we all have the same thought: It would be way easier to have this in a table or at least in a different format.  Yeah! I had that same thought until I got bored of it and started just putting everything in a easier format to work with. Then I couldn't stop myself there and I kept creating resources to complement the rubrics. Along with the rubrics I have been working on more documents that come in handy for multiple purposes. 

MYP Unit Planner:
a template with guidance that fits the IB format. [Template found on the cloud, thanks to Locke School]

Task requirements:  
break down by phases. Really useful document to keep in mind everything in just one page.

What are we covering in phase 1?
This is a curriculum maps document for a school year. Remember that usually a phase takes two years to be completed ;)

Objectives and Assessment Criteria aligned with CEFR:
We all know that pretty much in all schools we have to juggle with two or more programs (IB, AP, DELE, CEFR, A Levels, IGCSE...) This is a document I use to put everything in one page.

Español MYP rubrics
Phase 1		Phase 2		Phase 3
Criterion A	Criterion B	Criterion A	Criterion B	Criterion A	Criterion B
Criterion C	Criterion D	Criterion C	Criterion D	Criterion C	Criterion D
Phase 4		Phase 5		Phase 6
Criterion A	Criterion B	Criterion A	Criterion B	Criterion A	Criterion B
Criterion C	Criterion D	Criterion C	Criterion D	Criterion C	Criterion D

If you have more documents that can complete this post and are willing to share with the community, please send them through ;)

Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.

Lyndon Johnson

Lunaprofe 9/05/2016  No comment

How can we learn vocabulary?

I have been doing this in my class every year but just this year had the necessary creativity to write everything down and draw my posters to put up in my class, more my style.

The posters are to put up in your class walls to have a continuous visual reference for your students, so every time you ask them for one of these concepts they can use them to answer or refresh their memory.

In addition to the idea and the posters, you can check this post out to get to know better how to use these materials and to see more ideas and resources in action.

An idea to use the posters:  when you are teaching/learning vocabulary ask your students directly referring to one of these categories let your students explore all these categories before helping them to understand a word, let them gain their independence acquiring the language by themselves.

Another ideas to learn vocabulary:  Research is saying that memory recall increases when students write down notes. Let them have five minutes each class to hand write the vocabulary list for that class in their notebooks.  I also use an online platform [Edmodo, Haiku, etc] to keep track of the vocabulary seen in class and at the end of the week they take a tiny-little quiz on the vocabulary learnt, usually five minutes to explain five words. This activity also help them to develop time-management skills. Recycle your vocabulary. After the quiz I can find out if my students are learning or not that vocabulary. If they haven't we recycle the words they are struggling with and re-teach them in a different way [hands-on, visual, listening ...] Personal connections are crucial to place words into our internal lexicon. If the student is able to find a familiar situation that connects the new word to something she/he knows it will be easier for her/him to remember that new word.

Estrategias para aprender palabras [McDowell, 1984]:

• Escribir la palabra
• Escribirla junto a su traducción
• Relacionarla con otras palabras [por la forma o el contenido]
• Intentar recordar cómo suena
• Asociar su sonido al de otras palabras
• Repetirla mentalmente
• Pensar en un contexto en el que utilizarla
• Asociarla con un sinónimo o con un antónimo
• Formarse una imagen mental de la palabra o del objeto
• Hacer un dibujo o un signo gráfico

Resources:

• ¿Cómo aprendemos vocabulario? [pdf] [document with links]
• Posts about vocabulary [Antonio Luna]

Extra:

• ¿Puedo ir al baño? [pdf]
• ¿Puedo ir a beber agua? [pdf]

Thinking about high-level vocabulary and scoring highly in your exams? 

Click here

I have no special talents

I am only passionately curious

Albert Einstein

Lunaprofe 8/22/2016  No comment

Spanish B Unit: El facebook de mi abuela

Unit titles must be engaging to gather students attention and awake their curiosity. I asked my students to think of a title for this unit and they came up with this super engaging title "El Facebook de mi abuela" which summarize perfectly what this unit contains.
Although the IB states the possibility of just choosing two options by the teacher we always see all of them. To me it just makes sense, the more you offer your students the more opportunities they will have to do better in their exam. There is no need of doing a super long unit on each topic. When it comes to this you can do mini-units or "express units" comprising vocabulary, main concepts and ideas and give them a sense of what is that option about.


For a full understanding of how to teach this unit, please read the unit planner and if you still have any question/doubt don't hesitate to reach out. If you develop any other materials for this particular unit, please share them so we can add them to the list below.

All you need to teach/learn this unit:  Essential questions [pdf] Vocabulary [pdf] [Quizlet] Unit Planner [pdf] Visual stimuli [images] [Interactive Oral] Activation of prior knowledge [pdf] Activity to work the subjunctive [.doc] [Antonio Gallardo] Skill: compare [pdf] Writing [pdf] [Paper 2] Article: Inventions del nuevo milenio [pdf] [Paper 1] Interactive activity [Edpuzzle] Making predictions [pdf] Presentation to compare evolution of different items [pdf] [made by students] How am I going to be assessed? [pdf]

Interested in more units? Click here ;)

Feedback through Social networking

There are worse crimes than burning books.

One of them is not reading them.

Joseph Brodsky

Lunaprofe 8/19/2016  4 comments

Why do we sing songs?

Singing songs is a great way of learning/improving languages. We do it in my class, every single day. The students have fun and that on itself can be enough to take this activity into my class but there are more important things while having fun implied in singing songs. 

In order to help my students to develop independency, autonomy, we always talk in class about the strategies, activities we do and we reason them out. This continuous practice allows them to take ownership of what they do and help them realize they are in control of their education and that being an active agent of it is crucial for them to become a better student and person.

How do I do this with my students: 

We start singing songs without any explanations or comments, we just sing. After that I ask my students to write down their thoughts on Why do you think we sing songs in class? [you will be surprised by how accurate their responses are sometimes] To conclude this activity I ask them to read this post and we do a debate the following class to put everything together.

Let's try to summarize what I think in bullet points [they don't come numbered because the order is not related to importance]:

Some benefits of singing songs:  It's a fun way of learning vocabulary and pronunciation Through singing you are training your "ear" for Spanish It helps you comprehend Spanish better because you get used to native speakers of the language in a natural context. Singing is authentic. When you listen songs from different singers from different places you are being exposed to different native accents It is a new and enthusiastic way of learning for many students When you are singing and learning you are being emotionally involved, therefore that learning that takes place is going directly to your long-term memory A song gives you the opportunity of dramatizing the lyrics When you are singing you acquire the information you need naturally Songs present the language as parts and wholes Singing songs will help you score highly in reading, spelling, reading comprehension, mathematical reasoning, numerical operations and listening tasks Music training will give you a major boost in terms of spatial-temporal memory It benefits your oral communication skills  Songs are the perfect fit for many activities [language related] If you are new to the language and you are struggling, singing songs will let you join the joy of learning at the very same level as the rest of the class Songs are a snapshot of the culture, so singing songs you are gaining not just language knowledge but cultural one too A song will make you learn language without even realizing it because it keeps the stress bar low while you are just enjoying singing with your friends While listening to Mozart will not make you smarter, music instruction will help you score significantly higher on measuring spatial-temporal cognition, hand-eye coordination and arithmetic  Music improves your verbal skills and sensorimotor integration [musicians are better drivers] Your neurocognitive skills will get better Singing will help you achieve that fluency you have been struggling with in a natural and authentic manner ...

Bibliography:

• Renate Nummela Caine and Geoffrey Caine (1990) [pdf]
• O’Keefe & Nadel (1978) [pdf]
• Frances H. Rauscher (2003) [pdf]
• Brochard, Dufour, and Després (2004) [pdf]

Want to know more?

• Learn Spanish through music
• Learning Spanish through music: Using Youtube
• Developing oral fluency through songs
• Learning Spanish with songs
• Learning Spanish through songs: Lyrics training
• Learning Spanish with the version of your favorite song

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education

Mark Twain

Lunaprofe 8/15/2016  2 comments

IB Spanish text types: la invitación

The key to write a perfect invitation is to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Keeping this in mind you'll be able to identify which are the key components you need to include. 
Basic information always needs to be there. As a telegraphic reminder:

• ¿Qué? [evento]
• ¿Cómo? [código de vestimenta]
• ¿Cuándo? [Fecha y hora]
• ¿Dónde? [Lugar]
• ¿Por qué? [motivo]  

Regarding register we basically have two different types: formal & informal.

Make sure you:

• include a reference to the person/group of people you are inviting

• structure your invitation in paragraphs

• include basic information (review the telegraphic reminder)

Invitación evento formal

#colegio     #escuela  #invitación    #formal

Estimada Sra. Palargo: Tengo el placer de comunicarle que su hijo ha sido seleccionado para uno de los premios que se otorgarán en la ceremonia de clausura de este curso escolar en el Hotel Trinidad, calle San Poque, número 28C a las 20:00. Nos encantaría poder contar con su presencia y la de su familia y nos llenaría de orgullo que usted o su esposo acompañaran a su primogénito a recibir su premio. Nos complacerá muchísimo su compañía en este evento. Me gustaría aprovechar la ocasión para recordarle que este es un evento de etiqueta. Reciba un cordial saludo, María Eugenia de los Toldos Directora de Secundaria CIS

Resources:

• Activity: writing + culture [pdf]
• Presentation on Invitations [web]
• Text types [web]

If we want to reach real peace in this world,

 we should start educating children.

Mahatma Gandhi

Lunaprofe 8/01/2016  No comment