To give you something to look forward to as you head back to the classroom, we are pleased to announce a Back to School Contest. One lucky winner will walk away with a notebook, pen, and one of our most popular products on CD.
Win these 3 items: A $25 value
Because the letters “b” and “v” have the same pronunciation in Spanish, they can sometimes be a bit confusing. Calling the letters “be” and “ve” sounds exactly the same, so many times you will hear other names for these letters. “Be de Burro” and “V de vaca” are one way to distinguish these letters. Another is “B grande” and “v chica”. Recently, the RAE has declared that the “v” shall be now known as “uve”, but that will still not help the spelling of words.
If you have ever had native speakers in your class, Continue reading
Here’s another great song to add to your Spanish class collection. This song is great for early level Spanish class because the pace is slow and very easy to understand. Of course, you can use any authentic media, such as a song, with any level, the only difference for 
novice learners and more advanced students will be the task you ask them to perform.
The song “Querido Tommy” is a letter written by a fan to singer Tommy Torres asking him for help in professing his love a girl. Tommy responds with this song. You can see the lyric video here and see the fill lyrics below.
For those teachers who are just starting their first job and are trying to figure out how to decorate their empty classroom or veteran teachers looking for fun, new ways to connect with their students, we have an exciting deal for you.
As part of our August Back to School Sale, we are hosting a BUY TWO, GET ONE FREE sale on all all posters.
You can get 3 awesome posters for the price of 2. Shipping as low as 3 dollars for the 3-set of posters. How awesome would the following look in your classroom?
Click the image above to purchase any posters, and be sure to check out other items in our store. Spend over $50 and get FREE SHIPPING. Be sure to keep checking our facebook for special giveaways and other sales throughout the month.
Our most products:
–‘Me Gusta’ self inking stamp
–Over 50 Bell Ringers
–Conversation Cards
–Pack of 50/100 Verb Cards
–Bulletin Board Set
Spanish teachers, has this ever happened to you? A student asks you how to translate some really obscure word into Spanish? Then this is the comic for you:
How do you normally respond to these questions?
One of my biggest pet peeves is the spelling of the Colombia. In fact, I have even seen news programs get it wrong. The country of Colombia does not have a “U” in it. Not even in the “English version”. In Spanish AND English the country has two O’s. No U’s. This is one fact my students know not to mess up.
There are tons of companies that use the spelling “Columbia”. Columbia Sportswear is probably the biggest one. The New York university Columbia is well know, along with other colleges going by that name. Among cities named Columbia, we must mention the capital of South Carolina.
As summer nears, we bring you our top pictures that have been pinned and repinned on pinterest. If you are not using pinterest yet, what are you waiting for? It has become a great way to teachers to get ideas on everything from classroom decoration, organization, lesson plans, activities, and much more. Join our 500 other followers and start re-pinning these great ideas for your Spanish class!
10. Spanish Sqworl
Over 90 websites with ideas, resources, games, readings, and more to use in your Spanish class. Organized on our Spanish Sqworl. Also check out our Tech Tools Sqworl.
9. Cognate Word Wall
Last January we wrote about our Spanish cognate word wall that we post as our classroom bulletin board. When reading, students can add a new word to the wall by using a sentence strip post-it.
8. Guess Who Spanish Student Assistance Sheet
Students can use this print-off to help them form the questions with the correct vocabulary. Perfect game to practice descriptions!
7. Facebook Personal A
How do you get kids to remember to put the ‘personal a’ in front of forms of gusta? Easy, you show them authentic examples from their favorite website, facebook.
And speaking of facebook, have you checked out our new “Me Gusta” Stamp?
6. Conversation Cards
Get your beginning Spanish students talking! Over 300 questions for your students to ask and respond to. 31 pages for Level 1 Cards and 28 pages for Level 2 Cards with 6 “cards” on a page to cut out. Click the image to download the free preview or to purchase the cards on CD.
See the top five… Continue reading
This past year, I had a new idea to expose my students to more culture and have them identify with a particular Hispanic country. I had each class “Adopt a Country” so to say. Each of my classes choose a particular country; we had a head-to-head vote until we narrowed it down to one country. Each class had one country that they would focus on for the school year.
At the beginning of the year, students learned the geography of Latin America and took a quiz on labeling the map and matching the capitals. (Quiz here).
The first step was buying some cheap clocks to hang up in my room so that we could talk about the time in that particular country. It beat having to ask “¿Qué hora es?” every day and get the same time because I could choose to ask “Qué hora es en…Chile ahora?“
Click the picture to read more about setting up the clocks.
The next step was Continue reading
Yes, we are back! After enjoying a nice vacation in South America, through the tour company Intrepid, which took us to the likes of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, and enjoying the most amazing sights of Iguazú Falls, we are here with a new post!
Last summer we brought up the debate of teaching and using the “vosotros” form, which, as you know, is only used in Spain. Seems like a lot of us are split on this; According to our poll nearly 39% teach and require vosotros, while 36% teach it but don’t require it, and 26% don’t teach it at all. If you haven’t voted, you can continue to do so.
One thing that I brought up was the inclusion of “vos” in the classroom. Vos is used by a much larger population than vosotros. It can be heard in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and even parts of Colombia, Vos is essentially a replacement for tú.
For how do you form vos? Essentially, you drop the -r from the infinitive and add an “s” with an accent over the last vowel. For example: hablás, escribís, comés.
For the command form, simply drop the “-r” from the infinitive and add an accent: hablá, escribí, comé.
The form of ser is sos. Otherwise, you do not see many irregular or even “stem-changing” forms. For example, the present tense form of venir would be venís and the command would be vení.
Do I think it needs to be expressively taught? No. Same as vosotros, it is something that students can understand easily on the travels, and if needed could even pick up quite easily. Otherwise, it is best they stick to using the formal Usted or the standard tú. But, especially in upper levels, students should know that this form does exist and is used in the real world.
To see real world examples of vos in action, check out pictures of these advertisements and comic strips that I took during my recent time in Argentina.
Click to enlarge
We are pleased to announce that we have been nominated and make the voting process For the Top 100 Language Learning Blogs as presented by lexiophiles.com. Out of 935 nominations, our site, Spanish Plans, is up for Top Blog. If you enjoy our site, we would love your vote! Please click the button below and select “Spanish Plans” to submit your vote.
We thank you very much for your support and look to bringing you more great ideas and resources for your Spanish classroom.
-Justin
SpanishPlans.org 