Reading activity: una televisión para los perros

I believe reading in the target language is crucial because it promotes fluent reading skills which then leads to fluency in the other language skills such as speaking and writing. Fluent reading means reading without a dictionary, which can be challenging if students read an authentic text or a book.

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Back to school with a song: mi persona favorita

I am back to school after a wonderful summer vacation and in order to get back into the swing of things, I found this catchy song which I played to my grade 8 and 10 classes:

As I mentioned in an earlier post,

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acquisition65 answers24 communication10 comprehensible100 future32 input47 listening52 lyrics2 past316 personalized16 PQA8 present565 questions74 Rio Roma1 skills26 song29 Spanish33 speaking73 structures7 TPRS71 vocabulary256 youtube67

Pablo Picasso y el Guernica for Spanish beginners

As the school year draws to a close, I have chosen to read a book in Spanish with my students. If we don’t manage to finish the book, my students will have to finish reading it over the summer holidays which will be an excellent practice to keep up their Spanish.

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Spanish story script: se vende

This story comes from the wonderful Martina Bex who posts so many brilliant ideas and resources on her blog. I started a new unit with my grade 6 class which is about going shopping and this story fitted perfectly!

Speaking/vocabulary: I first started by introducing the different shops to my students using this slideshow: SHOPS.

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acquisition65 comprehensible100 comprehension250 creative13 expression21 flashcards8 key structure10 language45 Martina Bex11 pattern1 quizlet9 repetition42 se vende1 sell6 selling1 shop9 shopping13 skills26 Spanish33 speaking73 story46 storytelling39 target9 TPRS71 writing55

The perfect song to use the past tenses in Spanish!

I love using songs in my lessons and I found out that my students enjoy it too! Apparently some of them even buy some of the songs! When we listen to a song in class, we listen to it several times in the week at the start of each Spanish lesson.

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canción2 Education20 expressions5 imperfect187 imperfecto1 listen283 listening52 pasado1 past316 preterite1 preterito1 questions74 quiz18 Sheila1 Sheila Blanco1 Sheila Down1 skills26 song29 Spanish33 speaking73 story46 structures7 vocabulary256

Civilization project to use the past tense in Spanish

I have covered the past tense in Spanish with my grade 8 students (13-14 years old) this term and I want them to be able to describe past events confidently and accurately. Over my teaching experience I have found out that doing the traditional grammar exercises such as filling in the gaps with the correct verb forms does not really work with students.

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Spanish story script number 5: ¿Por qué?

Here is another story script which follows the last story about Elena trying to apologize to Pedro. This time Elena offers a present to Pedro and he has to open different packages. The focus is on the difference between “¿Por qué?

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