French culture: celebrating la Chandeleur !

Candlemas is around the corner and I have prepared some fun activities to do in the French class to celebrate this special event. In fact as the activities are mainly centered around crepes and how to make them, you could also use them to celebrate Mardi Gras (which is on the 9th of February this year) or if you are teaching a topic on food.

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acquisition33 activities5 bundle1 celebrate4 celebration5 communicative7 comprehensible41 Cooking17 cultural5 culture22 Education8 food13 French20 grammar6 infinitive1 input39 logic1 logical2 numeracy1 passé-composé2 past5 perfect tense2 recipe12 story34 storytelling28 teacherspayteachers11 TPRS34 tradition1

Reflection on Comprehensible Input

I haven't updated my blog for a while now, and as I am taking a break due to my fourth baby coming at the end of September, I wanted to reflect on my last school year. I was teaching Spanish from grade 6 to 12 and I decided to turn to comprehensible input and TPRS since I was never fully satisfied with the traditional way to teach languages.

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6th graders2 acquisition33 comments1 comprehensible41 Education8 encourage2 feedback3 fluency15 fluent12 grade 108 grade 74 grade 85 grade 98 IGCSE12 input39 inspire4 languages5 listening29 Martina Bex10 middle school3 motivate7 motivation6 personalized13 reading36 review4 Spanish27 story34 story asking9 storytelling28 TPRS34

Back to school with a song: mi persona favorita

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:

As I mentioned in an earlier post,

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acquire28 acquisition33 answers8 communication7 comprehensible41 future1 input39 listening29 lyrics1 past5 personalized13 PQA5 present3 questions19 Rio Roma1 skills24 Spanish27 speaking37 structures6 TPRS34 vocabulary18 youtube17

The perfect song to use the past tenses in Spanish!

I love using songs in my lessons and I found out that my students enjoy it too! Apparently some of them even buy some of the songs! When we listen to a song in class, we listen to it several times in the week at the start of each Spanish lesson.

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acquire28 canción2 Education8 expressions3 imperfect2 imperfecto1 listen6 listening29 pasado1 past5 preterite1 preterito1 questions19 quiz4 Sheila1 Sheila Blanco1 Sheila Down1 skills24 Spanish27 speaking37 story34 structures6 vocabulary18

Students blogging in Spanish and learning many skills.

I created another blog for my Spanish students where I want to share resources and students' work. As a matter of fact I already had another blog on Posterous but it closed down and therefore I had to look for another free platform. I found Kidblog which is free for up to 50 students and does not require students to sign in with an email address.

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blog6 Blogging2 category1 comment2 conditional2 conversation12 creative12 Juanes1 kidblog1 la historia de Juan1 post3 productive4 publish2 simple past4 skills24 Spanish27 tag1 tools1 useful2

IB Spanish students: social relationships

I teach Spanish language B IB to 5 students this year. I find the programm very interesting as it requires higher level language as well as thinking. However it is quite challenging for my students. One topic we have to cover is about social relationships and it is quite a wide and vague topic,

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Argentina1 dicatotorship1 documentary2 Education8 high level1 history5 IB6 language B4 Latin America1 list3 novel4 poem4 reading36 resouces1 resource4 social relationships2 Spanish27 wiki5

Immigration project in Spanish

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.

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Africa1 diary1 Education8 Gibraltar1 immigration1 learning14 Manu Chao1 present perfect1 project10 reading36 skills24 Spanish27 speaking37 writing17