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,
This school year I started to tell more stories TPRS style. I got no training at all so I do my own thing which seems to work well. I invent stories which are fun to listen to and easy to understand even for Spanish beginners. I already wrote some of the stories when I was on maternity leave and I used them with grade 6 and 7.
I am hooked on Google+ at the moment and yesterday I read this short post from Yonatan Zunger: “This game is remarkably fun: You get five random images from Street View, and you have to try to figure out where in the world you are.
As Kevin Mclaughlin mentionned in his great post Set learning free in 100 words, we as teachers should “try not to overplan, forget the detail and be confident in changing direction as and where learning takes you.” This is exactly what I attempted to do with this project I set up last year with grade 7.
The thought of watching a Spanish or French movie with my classes has always appealed to me. It develops listening and comprehension skills which are keys to then improve pronunciation and speaking skills. By watching a moving in the target language you can acquire a lot of vocabulary and you can also learn so much about the culture,