Comida Autentica

Posted on March 19, 2013 by spanishplans

On of my favorite units is teaching the Food Unit. I love sharing the unique flavors of Latin Comida Autentica PowerpointAmerica with my students. During the beginning of the unit, I have a “Comida del día” that I have described on the powerpoint along with their daily bellringer questions. We discuss the food and its origin.

Hispanic Comida Bulletin BoardTo help students identify these foods and create a lasting impressions I recently created a Bulletin Board of Authentic Hispanic Foods including Pictures and Labels. Each are only $1.00 and ready to print or use immediately in class.

Comida Bulletin Board

In another section of the room, I took this document (which you can download for free) and enlarged it on our school’s poster maker. As we talked about the foods, many students were eager to try these foods or had already tried them. The students would write their name under that item and write a smiley face if they liked it or frowny face if they didn’t.

Yo he probado firme si has probado
Me Gusta No me gusta

Don’t forget to check out our other Comida related posts.

What’s your favorite food from the Spanish Speaking world?

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Using Memes in Spanish

Posted on March 13, 2013 by spanishplans

What’s the most important thing in a foreign language class? To give students comprehensible input and show them the language in context. When you can accomplish this and entertain the kids at the same time to keep their interest, you’ve got yourself a win-win situation. During the Food Unit, we decided to google image search some vocabulary words/terms and we found some delicious memes.

Google Image Search is such an easy way to show students differening vocabulary. Want to compare the word “tortilla” in Mexico and in Spain? Google Image Search “Tortilla” and “Tortilla española”. The students can clearly see the difference directly from the pictures. Can same comparisons with “torta” and “torta de chocolate”

Google Image Search

Re Pin This Post

Anyway, we found some great memes incorporating the phrases “Tengo hambre” and “Estoy lleno”. Continue reading →

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Educreating Spanish Cooking Videos

Posted on February 28, 2013 by spanishplans

What better input to learn about food and cooking in context than to watch short Salsa Roja de la receta de la abuelitatutorials on how to make food. The power of Youtube gives us so much access to resources many teachers didn’t have in the past, it may be our best resource since…. I don’t even know what.

In this post, we share several videos and ways to use them, and also 2 iPad apps to incorporate into La Comida Unit. Continue reading →

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Making connections

Posted on February 20, 2013 by spanishplans

Connections
Connect with Other Disciplines and Acquire Information

“Standard 3.1: Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language”

The 5 C’s of learning a Foreign Language consist of Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities.

We previously talked about how our students connected new Spanish vocabulary words with the stems they were studying in their Language Art classes.

I thought of this next idea as I was prepping to use a song during our food unit. This Jesse y Joy (cloze activity) song, “Una en un millón,” features the following lyrics:

eres la crema en mi café
la cereza del pastel
el agua de mi té

That got me thinking to what other metaphors could the students could come up with on their own. Some examples my students came up with:

eres la leche con mi galleta
eres la leche en mi cereal
eres la mantequilla de mi pan
eres los frijoles con mi arroz
eres la lechuga de mi ensalada
eres los frijoles de la torta
eres el cilantro y cebolla del taco

My mind started to wander from that point and since they were coming up with Foreign Language Standard Connectiontheir own new lyric lines, what if we expanded this to their world. We want our students to see and think Spanish outside our four walls. What if we had students try to apply their learned vocabulary to music they listened to?

How cool would it be if students Continue reading →

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Videos y Fotos for LA COMIDA unit

Posted on February 15, 2013 by spanishplans

Teaching a unit about La Comida? Here’s some media resources for your Spanish classroom for this Food unit:

Música/VideosMesero Groover/Audio

  • Canción “Chocolate” de Jesse y Joy
  • Canción “Una en un millón” de Jesse y Joy (Cloze lyrics and activity)
  • Youtube “Archibaldo y las hamburguesas” El mesero Groover sirve una hamburguesa chica y otra bien grande.
  • Youtube “Pancho pide agua” Pancho quiere agua pero tiene un mesero con muchas preguntas.
  • Youtube “Comer Galletas” Monstruo Comegalletas canta de galletas en todas las estaciones del año
  • Videos de “La Receta de la Abuelita” – How-to videos on how to make various Mexican dishes, in Spanish. Great input for students! Including how to make tacos de lengua, salsa, churros, mole, and more! Most videos approx. 5 minutes.
  • Video/Audio from native speakers with ordering at a restaurant interviews. Students sure enjoyed José’s enthusiasm! These interviews also include transcript!

Dibujos y Fotos

Taco Bell is Not Mexican Food
Here’s an interesting post on the difference between Taco Bell and a real Mexican Taco Bell with an article on what Mexicans thought when Taco Bell opened up restaurants in Mexico.

. Continue reading →

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Resources for LA ROPA unit

Posted on January 29, 2013 by spanishplans

Teaching a unit about La Ropa? Here’s some resources for your Spanish classroom for this Clothing unit:

Música/VideosTarget Ropa

Dibujos y Fotos
Comic by Macanudo
Macanudo Fellini Enriqueta

Pequeño Mediano Grande

Twitter user @profeslack tweeted “There is no better way to start the day than perusing http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/  looking for pictures to use in clothing unit!”

For more pictures, check out our collaborative Clothing Unit board on Pinterest.

Actividades

  • El Corte Ingles Webquest: Have your students navigate through the Spanish Spanish Ropa Vocabdepartment store, El Corte Ingles, while discovering the meaning of clothing vocabulary words on their own. Very motivating and engaging lesson. For instructions and a pre-made handout, purchase our webquest on TpT. Can even have students “purchase” an outfit on a pretend budget of Euros. Continue reading →
Posted in Lesson Plans, Resources, Speaking, Vocabulary | Tagged | 2 Comments

Escribir una carta a Santa

Posted on December 20, 2012 by spanishplans

Resources para La Navidad
With vacation approaching and students getting ready for the holidays, today students wrote a letter to Santa. It fit in perfect with our ‘shopping’ unit to talk about items they would want or not want. For those who always get a pair of socks, or an ugly sweater, they can put these in the negative.

I printed out the following letter template and put the following picture up on the board with the requirements with included the recycling of many previously learned material.

Carta a Santa

Download Carta a Santa

 

Escribir una carta a Papa Noel

Click to enlarge

arbol de navidadSpanish Christmas ComicAnd what gift does Santa bring to los niños traviesos? Find out in this comic.

The song “Regalito” by Juanes also has some good phrases such as “Sé que te va a gustar” y “adivina lo que es” y “te regalo” among others.

Another holiday related song is “En tus brazos estaré” por Jesse & Joy.

And to leave you all with a chiste:
How does a sheep wish you a happy holiday?
¡Fleece Navidad!

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Language Lab Activity

Posted on December 2, 2012 by spanishplans

For those of you who have language labs in your building, this post may not be very enlightening. For those of us that teach in a building without such luxuries, we too can incorporate similar assessments and practice with other technologies. If you have access to iPods, iPads, a bring your own device policy, or even access to computers or recording devices, you can have students record in pairs.

I gave my students a script to complete with their partner. Using the app “QuickVoice” or “Voice Memo” students were able to record themselves and share the file with me as an e-mail. Here is a video clip of the script and a sample student recording:

I can get a short, quick assessment of their fluency and pronunciation on an individual basis and only spend 10-15 minutes of class time doing it. By working in pairs, I only have 1/2 to listen to. The parts they have to translate tells me how well they know that information while the scripted parts are a good sense of their pronunciation.

Language Lab Rubric

Quick Speaking Assessment

For a sample script with a rubric, download our Language Lab Script Rubric.

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Dragon Dictation

Posted on November 28, 2012 by spanishplans

The app Dragon Dictation is an interesting app for students to practice their pronunciation. I give student a script to read from and they record themselves to see how well the computer can understand their accent. First, make sure you change the settings to Español (Américas) or Español (Europa) otherwise you will get some very funny sentences in English when the students are speaking in Spanish.

I could suggest the students record small chunks at a time, otherwise the app sometimes doesn’t process large chunks and students will have to re-record. Students will also have to tell the app when to place in punctuation so typing this into the script may be helpful for students. Clicking the info button on the button of the app will open up a “Tips” screen which includes common commands such as “punto”, “nueva línea”, “nuevo párrafo”, “coma” and more.

Obviously, the clearer their pronunciation is the more likely the app is to recognize the speech correctly. However, with a classroom full of students, it is difficult if there Continue reading →

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Univision App

Posted on November 26, 2012 by spanishplans

Univision has several apps available for the iPad including “Univision”, “Noticias” and “Deportes”. I used the regular “Univision” app today and let my students explore different articles that would be of interest to them. I had first year students engaged in reading articles in Spanish because they would find things to read that they were actually interested in. As we talked about in our last post, making connections to students’ interests goes a long way in getting students interested in the language itself.

Whenever students are looking at a text, I remind them to use three strategies to help: 1) Cognates 2) Own vocabulary of words they have learned, and most importantly 3) context. It was also helpful to have the “Wordreference” app so students could look up definitions for important words. The four-finger swipe to switch between open apps is truly helpful too.

In the Univision App, clicking on “sitios” at the bottom brings you to various Continue reading →

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