As I mentioned in my previous post, I am a big fan of The Comprehensible Classroom because there are so many fun story scripts to be used and Martina Bex (the author) shares so many fabulous ideas and lesson plans! One story script I have used with my middle school students (grade 6 to 8) is Buscando Gafas.
The topic of school in grade 6 (11-12 years old) gives the opportunity to learn about the facilities at a school, the different subjects and the time (here is the curriculum I planned for this topic). At the end of the topic I like to have a my students work on a project to recap all the new vocabulary and structures they have learned.
The verb “gustar” is not an easy verb to use as it is so different from “normal”verbs. The majority of students know how to use it in the first person singular “me gusta” but they rarely know how to use it when they want to refer to someone else.
My students in grade 10 have a speaking examination in 5 weeks time and I believe this is the most stressful part of their IGCSEs. In order to prepare them well for the general conversation (which consists of asking a series of linked questions on two or three topics which students have covered in grade 9 and 10) I asked my students to get in pairs,
Here is another story script which follows the last story about little Pedro losing his notebook. This story has lots of repetitions to focus on “lo siento” and “no sé qué hacer“. I am telling those stories using wooden ice cream sticks which the students love.
With my current grade 8, we culminated our unit about television with a creative project: to create a new TV program and present it to possible producers!
Before working on the project, we looked at different kind of TV programs in Spain and in South America which lead to different activities and which also provided with a lot of comprehensible input.
As far as homework is concerned, I have been trying something new which has been successful so far. Basically I let my students do what they want as long as it is in Spanish!
At the start of the year I told them that they will acquire the Spanish language,