Un monstruo horrible: Numbers and Colors Practice

*This is a classic post from my previous blog, Musings de la Maestra McH. Enjoy!*

I started my 4th quarter class of junior high Spanish with a batch of 17 7th graders.  Day 1 we went over procedures for entering the class room, they filled out notecards I use in class and we talked about how I do warm up activities.  I was able to infuse a lot of Spanish into this and by the end of the day they knew name, date, how do you say and what is in Spanish.  I modeled how to enter the room in Spanish using CI and it was a great opportunity to point out that even though they didn’t know the words, they could still understand and glean meaning.

Day 2 I introduced colors in TL using lots of questions and circling technique.  I asked for examples of things that were certain colors using “Qué es rojo/azul/amarillo/etc” since they knew “qué es” and I have a sign in my room that says it to help them.  I also had them tell a partner (introduced the word compañero and di) colors or examples.

Day 3 We learned a song about colors, and built on “Qué es” to “Qué es tu color favorito” and “Mi color favorito es…”.  They surveyed classmates.  They tallied up how many people liked each color and I had them report out in Spanish using the numbers 1-10 that I had just introduced.  I asked “A cuántas personas les gusta ___color__________” and they responded with a number like “siete”.

Day 4 Today I told them a story about a monster under my bed using the video linked here (which I paused) and actions.  I told them they were the policia and needed to draw the monster so we could find it.  I then gave them one part of the description at a time and they drew.  As they drew I walked around and commented on their monsters in Spanish that they were good, pretty, scary, horrifying etc with appropriate actions to help for understanding.  I also circled back and asked what color past body parts were and how many of that body part the monster had as students drew.  At the end the students shared their monsters, gave them names and hung them around.  There was some initial confusion about what to do or how many or what color but that soon dissipated as we continued and students caught on and I assured them (in Spanish) they were correct.  We closed the day with Zachary Jone’s (@ZJonesSpanish) Twiccionario Color sheet and I expanded to have them write in words the number of the question like “uno” “dos” “tres” etc.

Tomorrow I will focus more on numbers by using playing cards to do some simple math.  We’ll expand to number 1-20 tomorrow.  This idea was inspired by a blog post I read but I can’t remember which blog!  I believe it was http://creativelanguageclass.wordpress.com by Megan Johnston (@muchachitaMJ) but I’m not positive.

This has been a very different approach to teaching for me.  I can say these past few days have been a lot of fun and students are engaged and catching on quickly.

Here are some of their monsters!