Category: spanish

You know you’re doing something right when you ask a class to write a Christmas poem and several kids ask you for a Spanish dictionary – in a Literacy lesson!!

I have to explain that as well as teaching Spanish, I teach other subjects too and whilst I like to integrate Spanish into other areas of the curriculum, on this occasion I had meant them to write in English. However, I wasn’t going to discourage them so off they went to fetch the dictionaries. I did advise them to stick to a simple structure and suggested ‘Navidad es….’ as a repeated line but otherwise left them to it!

Most of the class did write poems in English – although several finished their English one then wrote in Spanish too – but there were three or four Spanish ones. We shared our some of our poems and, using an Easispeak microphone, we recorded some of them (sadly didn’t have time for all of them but we’ll do it next week!) Then, at lunchtime, we made them into Voki. They’re on the school website, but here are two Spanish ones.

One is written as an acrostic using Regalos as its theme.

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Get a Voki now!

The other was written by a lovely girl who finds literacy very tricky so I was really proud of her!

AC_Voki_Embed(200,267, ‘dc8a0e377b89808645868c8b762622f7’, 1032816, 1, ”, 0);

Get a Voki now!

Well, it’s December 1st and as much as I’ve tried to be strong, Christmas has finally got me! School is full of Christmas plans for plays, parent partnership days, activities, assemblies and the like, and home is likewise in Christmas mode as littl’un plays the lead in the Infants’ play tomorrow as The Little Angel – if his temperature doesn’t get any higher :os

And, obviously, plans for classroom activities are turning Christmas-ward too!

So, I’ve been through my files and found some Powerpoints that might help you – and me! to get our classes in the Christmas spirit as well as ticking a few Intercultural Understanding boxes!
I am not claiming responsibility for all of these as lots have been kindly shared by people on Yahoo! MFL resources group, or the Consejería.

So – to start you off, why not try learning how to say Merry Christmas in 10 languages other than English? Perhaps you could take one each morning for the next two weeks?

Here’s a Disney video from Youtube if you want more languages – and it’s even got the pronunciation for you!

Then perhaps have a look at some Christmas vocabulary in Spanish? If your room is decorated for Christmas, why not label the decorations – or use them for a game of ‘Búscame…’ ?

Christmas in Spain is very particular and the Ministerio de Educación y Cienciain conjunction with the Consejería de Educación en el Reino Unido e Irlanda have produced a great powerpoint presentation choc-a-block with authentic pictures of the events in December and January – not all of which are religious.

They have also produced a presentation about El Belén – the traditional Nativity scene that decorate Spanish homes at this time of year. I usually use my ELC nativity scene to retell the story of Christmas from the Biblical perspective completely in Spanish. Kids understand because it is a story with which they are familiar and also because I’m very dramatic in my retelling – the Head of the Catholic Prep, School where I used to work was rather taken aback by my reenactment of Mary being told by an angel that she was pregnant with Jesus ;o)

I also uncovered this very comprehensive presentation about Spain at Christmas complete with more photos and information in bite size chunks. It includes details of El Gordo, el Caganer (in ploite language!) and el Roscón de Reyes.

I’ve also found a presentation I did a few years ago at Birmingham Council House (I think it was!) about ideas for Christmas in the MFL classroom. It includes ideas for French, Spanish and German, and the ideas are suitable for right across the age range. I posted it last year too but in case you didn’t catch it….hopefully something for everyone! (hope the links still work!)

to be continued!!

Acabo de leer un artículo que me chifló sobre la Historia del Lego. Como madre de dos niños de seis y nueve años, no puedo escapar del Lego – han pedido de Papá Noel el Lego de la Guerra en las Galaxias.

Noticias Locas hoy habla de The Lego MiniFig Timeline que muestra los muñequitos de acción Lego desde 1978 hasta hoy.

Ahora estoy lista hablar con mis hijos sobre el Lego con más autoridad ;o)

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This afternoon I had the pleasure of the company of Year 2 for a whole afternoon of Spanish!! So I decided to indulge my creative urges and let them loose with the puppets! This caused great excitement – obviously – perhaps a little more than was strictly necessary, but heigh ho!

The idea was to create short role plays in pairs in Spanish using puppets so that we could safely record them using my camera’s video facility, then upload them and the kids would be able to watch them before going home. Best laid plans…

I handed out the puppets by naming them in Spanish and asking ¿Quién quiere el mono? for example – the pupils had to guess the animal to ‘win’ the right to hold it! That was fine. However, as they put the finger puppets on their fingers, the pupils’ excitement was a little more exuberant than foreseen and it took a while to calm down sufficiently to set the task. Of course, the pupils immediately wanted to start talking to one another using the puppets and I didn’t want to squash that urge, just channel it ;o)

Next problem was that all previous knowledge seemed to have popped out of their heads and for some reason there were very few who could even remember how to answer ¿Qué tal? let alone ask it! However, after a quick revision session we rehearsed and after break we had a go at recording our animal role play, using Smartboard backgrounds as our backdrops.

Below you can see some of the results – some were better than others and, believe me, given the time and effort it took, I’m pleased we recorded anything!

I was thinking of doing some animation with them…. perhaps leave it until I’ve recovered :o)

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4zUV0CHdbE&hl=en&fs=1]

A beautiful story for the end of October – made me go ‘ah!’

Here are the words in case you want them!

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clothes line, originally uploaded by daniel n. reid.

Having accosted him at the bus stop, I had the pleasure of travelling from Cowes to Newport with Adam Sutcliffe last Friday. Not quite sure why or how the subject arose, but I do know that at some point during the journey I said ‘This weekend I will mainly be wearing red’ as Adam reminded me of it on Saturday evening when I was in my fourth red outfit of the weekend saying ‘you weren’t joking, were you?!’

So, it amused me to read the following article on BBC Mundo:

Más sexy si se viste de rojo.
¿Quiere volver a un hombre loco de amor? Vístase de rojo. O al menos eso fue lo que encontró un estudio científico.

Basically, it suggests that if a woman wears red, she is seen as more attractive and more worth spending money on by men (but not by women!)

I’d just decided I would stick to one colour to save problems of deciding what to wear jewellery and accessory-wise and I’d just bought some lovely clothes in Barcelona. But it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?? ;o)

Karen aka Spanishblog has, for the second time in a week, pointed me in the direction of an interesting Spanish resource – this time, Lingus.tv.

Based in Barcelona, Lingus.tv uses its own situation comedy ‘5 y acción’ to teach useful phrases through short – and usually rather amusing – episodes featuring Paco, Sandro, Eva, Michael and Agatha. There are three different levels offered – Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced – with titles like ¿Dónde está mi bikini? (where’s my bikini?), Mi primer novio (my first boyfriend)and Espiando a Agatha (spying on Agatha).

I’ve watched several of the episodes, and a key feature seems to be the quirky ending or sting in the tail. See the latest example.

Each clip has subtitles in Spanish.
On the site there is a transcript of the dialogue.
At the click of a button, the dialogue is translated into English.
There are grammar notes pertinent to the episode, with an audio recording of the phrase / expression in question.
The clips are searchable by topic, objective and skill, as well as level.

The site offers advice on how to use the videos and also has a blog – the latest post talks about the benefits of second language acquistion.

I think it’s a good way of making a good start at learning some phrases at the same time as being entertained. I particularly like the use of more colloquial (and sometimes colourful!) language that can be missed in some other learning tools. Looking forward to seeing more episodes!! I’ll leave you with another episode – this one’s for beginners.

A Tweet from Spanishblog advised me to check out Profeland, la web para el profesor de español. And, as I’m an obedient girlie, off I popped to see what it was about. I must admit that i haven’t had time to look at it in depth and much of it seems to be great for older learners with comprehensions and reviews, but not much for Primary pupils…

…apart from

As the blurb says –
An “instructional” video teaching the use of the verb “Gustar”. Can you find the errors???

Now there’s a challenge ;o)

On checking Twitter this morning, I saw that Doug @dajbelshaw was trying out something new – called 12seconds.TV. I’m a nosey soul so when he offered invites, I was there like a shot.

Doug was kind enough to send me an invite so off I went to discover more.

It’s one of those ‘does what it says on the tin’ sort of sites – it’s all about 12 seconds of TV, a bit like Seismic but with a time limit. Just as Twitter limits you to 140 characters, here you have to be succinct too. You sign in with a username and are assigned your own channel – mine is http://12seconds.tv/channel/lisibo and then you just need a webcam and microphone – although Doug Belshaw managed here without a microphone ;o)

I had a first try waffling about nothing in particular, and answered today’s 12challenge – which is the best Star Wars film?

Then I started thinking of uses for 12seconds.tv, and came up with using it for a challenge – learn and perfect a Spanish tonguetwister.

Here’s the first one – from Puerto Rico

Spanish tongue twister #1 on 12seconds.tv

Trabalenguas #1 –
miel de abaja, miel de abeja, miel de abeja ……

I started thinking I’d put the widget in my blog sidebar – which I will do – but then thought I’d add it to the school web page and use it to set the challenge to pupils, staff, parents and the wider community. There’s not much going on the site at the moment and in the last year there have been three regular contributors, one of whom has left, one of whom is the administrator, and the other who loves pink and bling ;o) so I think any content will be welcome. I also take pride in promoting languages within the school – as I don’t have my own class, it’s the way most parents get to know who I am. Added to which, I like the idea of promoting language learning to the wider community – and tonguetwisters are such fun. Using video will help as I always find it easier to see the person’s face when I’m learning languages and trying to imitate pronunciation. And the 12 second limit makes it snappy – not an onerous task and within most people’s attention span.

I’ll let you know how it goes – but I’d love to see others having a go – perhaps you could join 12seconds.tv and post your attempts at the Spanish tonguetwisters?

Or post your own in French, German, Russian, Dutch, Chinese etc. or even a phrase in your local dialect? I’ve got 10 invites to give away if you’d like one!
We could start a whole new trend for linguistic 12seconds.tv videos!!

I’ll post another one in a day or so!