Flippity Jeopardy

¡Hola familias!

As we near the end of the units in 6th, 7th and 8th grade, an overall review of the unit is our "Jeopardy" game. In table groups, the students compite to win the most points. Flippity makes a template that is easily customized to our own units! Ask your estudiante about it!

¡Hasta pronto!

Juegos de vocabuario en parejas

¡Hola familias!

Today I am sharing with you a vocabulary game that we play usually at the beginning of the unit. The "Double Dice" game o "Dos dados".

For the "Deportes y tiempo libre" unit, students have a grid of choices, and a sentence starter to create questions and answers with their partner.  Students roll the dice to randomly fall in a square in the table, where (with the help of their picture dictionary) they can formulate a question and an answer with their partners. The students both recall their vocabulary and practice their grammar in context at the same time.
Ask your student about "el juego de doble dados"!

Autorretrato cubista

After studying physical description, we embarked on the journey of self portraits that started with Pablo Picasso, famous Spanish cubist painter, and ended with Frida Kahlo, renown Mexican artist and feminist.

We explored autorretratos by both artists. And used a padlet wall to create descriptions and review shapes and face body parts. Then we listened to each others descriptions and drew faces con formas.

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Tengo un transporte secreto en mi cabeza...

¡Hola familias!

In 8th grade we also played a similar game as in 6th grade, but with means of transportation. This game is like "heads up!"and helps with circumlocution and descriptions. Which one is your favorite transporte? Is it ecológico? How many ruedas does it have? Is it caro? How many people take it? Is it for mar, tierra o aire? ¿Is it grande, mediano o pequeño? These are some of the questions that the students had to ask to guess (just one chance) to win.

¡Adivina quién soy!

¡Hola familias!

In 6th grade Spanish we have been busy with physical descriptions in Spanish.  To practice, we played a game called "tengo un estudiante secreto en mi cabeza" in which, literally, the students have a secret student on their forehead... Fun was had by all, especially when the secret student was oneself, ha!

A student is trying to guess the name of the secret student on his baseball hat.

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¡Chichicastenango!

Spontaneous, creative conversations are a main focus of our work in class, being asking and answering creative questions part of our daily routines. Therefore, ¡Chichicastenango! is a game that allows us to hit that Intermediate Mid level target, asking and answering many spontaneous questions. It also helps us study for our Charlamos quiz next week. Chichicastenango is a very famous market in Guatemala.

How it works:

• Profe has a magic wand that turns anyone she gently taps into a "Chichicastenango". Chichicastenango students can only respond with the word Chichicastenango.
• The students gather in a circle with a chair, except for the Policía, who stands in the middle of the circle.
• Students "sleep" with eyes closed, including the Policía in the middle, until Profe is done delivering an unknown number of magic taps, turning different students into Chichicastenangos.
• The Policía needs to find the Chichicastenangos by asking questions in Spanish. Regular students will answer in Spanish, while Chichicastenangos will only respond with "Chichicastenago". It is how the magic works...
• At the sound of ¡Chichicastenango! everyone must change seats, and the Policía needs to try to seat as well. The last student to find a seat is the next Policía.

¡Chichicastenango en acción!

The Proficiency Path

¡Hola familias!

Today I thought I would include all the families at home in our conversations that we have about proficiency in the classroom. The students are familiar with the different proficiency levels and the "tasks" that they can do with the language. By the time the students graduate from Devo, the target proficiency level is Intermediate Mid. Here is a visual of the proficiency path:

As you can see, the Intermediate learner, writes in strings of creatives sentences, using connectors, and asks original questions! ¡Bravo, estudiantes de español!