It was my great honour to be invited to speak once more at the Talleres de español in London last weekend. Hosted by the Consejería de Educacción at Instituto Vicente Cañada Blanch, the day was packed with sessions focused on good teaching and learning in the Spanish classroom.
After the keynote delivered by the inimitable Bernadette Holmes, I attended a workshop led by Sara Alonso Jimeno all about using music and art in the primary Spanish classroom – AICLE con ritmo y color before moving on to a session led by Irene Carmona Velasco from the Europa School who was talking about creativity and technology – Español en movimiento.
Lunch as usual was delicious and the Estrella Galicia was very welcome on a hot day.
In the afternoon, I delivered my talk entitled Animania based around using animals as the starting point to explore learning in the Spanish classroom. I started by talking about choosing and ntroducing vocabulary, and SPaG in Spanish complimenting and reinforcing English. My second section was about using ‘noise’ – animal sounds to encourage participation, making an animal symphony and songs that can be used for a multitude of reasons. The third part was focused on reading and ideas for exploiting books – and I have so many of them! Following on naturally from here we explored creativity and culture, and giving learners agency for their learning by providing a structure that they then innovate. Finally the focus moved to how Spanish can be used in a cross curricular way in PE, Science, Geography, PSHE and for outdoor learning.
The day ended with a Zumba class – what a way to end the day, singing, dancing and perspiring profusely whilst having fun!
