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Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Caperucita Roja

I started out the school year with a story in 2nd grade this year - Caperucita Roja - to review the structures we learned last year using the Calico Spanish curriculum. While I love Calico, I added this before we jumped back in since students tend to forget so much over the summer. Caperucita Roja has so many opportunities to practice basic structures in the language and the kids love it because it´s familiar. 

Target Structures (Things they've seen before are bolded):

¿Cómo te llamas?  Me llamo ______.  
¿Cómo estás? Tengo hambre. Estoy triste. Tengo miedo. Estoy enferma.
Mi abuela está enferma.
¿Por qué?
Necesito ir (a la casa de mi abuela).
Necesitas venir aquí. 
Necesitas abrir la puerta.
¡Yo veo (body part) grande!
Necesito mirar/escuchar/comer.
Gracias/De nada. 

I told the story first using props from www.kizclub.com. I never tell the students what story they are listening to is one they already know in English because it's so much fun to listen to them as they figure it out. Before we start we repeat the expectations - Necesito mirar. Necesito escuchar. Necesito participar. Students participate by repeating the target structures with me as I tell them the story.


After hearing the story in one or two classes, I showed them a powerpoint with the same target structures. While I had individual students come up and act out certain parts, everyone read together (so that we ALL got practice.) My actors held their masks and had to look sad, sick, hungry, and ferocious. :-D At the end we discussed who were the characters, what was the problem in the story, and what was the solution. I let students answer in English (unless they were heritage speakers and then I insisted on Spanish) but we read the answer together in Spanish.




After doing the readers' theater version twice, I handed out envelopes with introductions to each characters. Students had to work together with a partner to match the introductions to the right character. Our staff recently went through Kagan training so we are all trying to use Kagan structures. I told the kids to work together and match them up AND THEN read them to each other using Rally Robin. But my second class didn't quite understand and instead one student would read a sentence and the other student had to find the picture and match it and then they switched - making it more like Rally Coach and a much better way to ensure everyone was engaged, reading AND listening. Don't you love it when students think of a better way to do something? Once they finished they got a worksheet with Sr. Lobo that they had to label the body parts. 



We had to move on quickly to make sure we had enough time to get our Journey North butterflies ready in time but our summative assessment for this unit will be a reading & matching exercise similar to the activity they already did.

Here's a great video (and authentic resource!) to use too. I have my novices listen for key words and it works great for differentiating for my heritage speakers. 



Do you teach any fairy tales? What resources do you use? Share in the comments below or on Twitter using the hashtag #earlylang!


Wednesday, September 16, 2015

What's your name game for kindergarten

Fellow Spanish teacher, Emily, here in Lexington recently emailed me with a great game for kindergarten.

I tried a new game this year and the kids have really loved it and we were able to speak in Spanish for the entire game. Thought I’d share. It’s so simple, but great.

Have students in a circle/desks/you could even do this in small groups once they get the hang of it.

Call on someone by asking ¿Cómo te llamas? They answer with Me llamo ___.

Whole class tell them Adios ____.

Cover them with a bandana or I used  a Spanish flag.

Whole class asks ¿Dónde está? ¿Dónde está? Until student pulls the flag off and the class shouts ¡Hola ____!

I demonstrated with my stuffed animal and myself so they wouldn’t feel silly about covering their heads. It is so simple, but I’m telling you their belly laughs are precious and they were all speaking in Spanish and loving it.

I played it this week with my kindergarten classes and like Emily's students we had a great time.