Obviously we Spanish teachers want to do something in Spanish to get our students thinking and functioning in Spanish again. But, at least in my case, I don't want to jump right in with something serious right away. I like to ease back into school in a friendly way so I try to come up with a "fun activity" when we track back in.
One of the things I tried for years, mostly unsuccessfully, was to encourage students to talk about what they did during vacation. This seems like a no-brainer in that it's personal, relevant, and interesting. Only, the problem is that students don't feel like they did anything worthy of mentioning or they don't have the vocabulary to express themselves. So I wind up frustrated at the front of the classroom going, ¿Nadie? ¿Nadie no hizo NADA durante las vacaciones? ¿En serio? ¿Nadie quiere compartir nada? Por favor . . . And then I give up in exasperation and I have to find busy work for them until the bell rings - not ideal.
As with most things in life, I found that the more preparation and work I put in ahead of time, the better things go. So I decided to create a meet-and-greet activity that will work at levels 2 and up.
Students use the sheet to interview one another and record their answers. I used a good mix of regular and irregular verbs but the activity could be easily modified to include other verbs. Today in Spanish II we did the activity using the present tense forms and I explained to them that we will be learning the preterite tense later in the week. In my other classes we used the preterite.
And here's a nice thing: when students fill in the names of their peers who answer yes to the various questions, it creates a visual chart. With a quick glance, they can easily tell which were the most popular and least popular activities over the break. (Math connections anybody?)
Be sure to review how to ask and answer questions and remind them to stay in Spanish. The idea of the activity isn't to get names on a sheet; it's to communicate with one another in Spanish.
Here is a link to the activity that we used today. I hope you are able to find a use for it in your classroom as well, amigos.
Hasta pronto,
--AnneK
4 comments :
Three weeks of fall break!? Did I read that correctly? You must be on a year-round schedule? Here in Arkansas, we don't get a fall break period. I would love to have the summer shortened with a fall break added.
Your activity seems great! I also have the problem of kids not wanting to share.
You're exactly right, GG. I teach at a year-round school. It's a great schedule and I don't think I'd ever want to go back to a traditional calendar. We're on for nine weeks and off for three. Summer break is four weeks for us teachers and five weeks for the kids.
The activity went well. They were on their feet and talking. I only had to remind people to stick to Spanish once or twice.
<3 --AnneK
The link to this activity no longer works! I used it in my classroom once before and loved it and want to use it again but no longer have any printed out to make copies of - can you reupload it??
Are you reading my blog through another site perhaps? Maybe Pinterest or some external blog reading site? The internal link from here on my blog seems to be working just fine. Try this: http://confesionesyrealidades.blogspot.com/2013/10/despues-de-las-vacaciones.html
If that doesn't fix it, email me and I'll send you a copy.
<3 --AnneK
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