Sugerencias Para Una Cita

Following up on yesterday's post, I thought I'd share some student work here.  My 2nd period Spanish IV class is a riot.  Honestly, they are always cracking me up with one thing or another.  And, the best part, they laugh at all my jokes.  We have a great time in there.

So I was thinking I'd get hilarious dating suggestions from them and you would all be as enchanted with my students as I am.  Indeed, several of the dating suggestions were very clever and snortingly funny, but the students did something I didn't expect.  When I asked them to find appropriate pictures to go along with their text, many of them used personal photos (from prom, homecoming, etc.).  Since I can't share photos of my students online, I can't put those presentations here.  *sad face*

I did have one pair of students put together a presentation that used online photos exclusively.  It's not going to make you slap your thighs and roll around on the floor, but it's a fine presentation and a good example of the assignment.  Click on the picture to see it.

One thing I did notice, much to my chagrin, is that the students were focused so much on getting the grammar right that they didn't use the sort of elevated vocabulary that I normally expect from Spanish IV.  Of course, in normal parlance, individuals don't always employ their most eloquent lexical selections, so perhaps I am being overly persnickety.  (Did you see what I did there?  LOL)

And, who knew?  Jeans delgados is apparently acceptable in Spanish.  I was tempted to correct it since it is obviously a literal translation of American slang, but I looked online and found countless examples of the expression used by native speakers.  Who am I to judge?

The assignment, just to sum up from yesterday, was to use familiar command forms to give dating advice.  Three affirmative commands and three negative commands were to be used along with object pronouns.  (The students in the above example left out the pronouns.)  Next time I will probably have them include some "Spanish IV vocabulary" on each slide too.

The assignment would be approachable with Spanish III or even with a gifted Spanish II class, as long as you did a vocabulary generation activity ahead of time and offered a lot of good examples.  (Feel free to use this one if you'd like.)  And there are a lot of Do and Don't lists (other than dating) that would make for good topics.  Last year I had Spanish III use their exercise/gym vocabulary and those presentations were also hilarious.  (Levanta pesas en el gimnasio.  No las levantes en el océano.   Haz ejercicio con un amigo.  No hagas ejercicio con una tostadora.)

Please feel free to comment below and share if you have any good ideas to teach commands.

Hasta pronto,

--AnneK