As you might already know, I have been reading La casa de Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca with my small group of Spanish language B IB higher level students. They are only girls in this group so I think they have enjoyed reading this tragedy about passionate love and freedom!
How to get students engaged and producing a lot of language???? Well.... I recommend purchasing Martina Bex 7-day lesson plans about Los niños prisioneros de Bolivia as it is truly worth the investment! Not only did it save me a lot of prep-time, it also made my students had a meaningful discussion in the target language!
This is a fantastic idea from one of my emails from the mflresources@yahoogroups.com: "I show the students some clips (2-3 mins each) from YouTube and they play the role of critic - after each clip they get 30 seconds to write their opinion of each clip and then a further 30 seconds to share their opinion with their neighbor.
I believe reading in the target language is crucial because it promotes fluent reading skills which then leads to fluency in the other language skills such as speaking and writing. Fluent reading means reading without a dictionary, which can be challenging if students read an authentic text or a book.
I am back to school after a wonderful summer vacation and in order to get back into the swing of things, I found this catchy song which I played to my grade 8 and 10 classes:
I have covered the past tense in Spanish with my grade 8 students (13-14 years old) this term and I want them to be able to describe past events confidently and accurately. Over my teaching experience I have found out that doing the traditional grammar exercises such as filling in the gaps with the correct verb forms does not really work with students.
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.