Really neat website

These cuentos interactivos are so cute!!!

http://www.cuentosinteractivos.org/

List Poems

List poems are a great way to allow students to create a finished piece that has intrinsic value all on it's own and at the same time reinforces vocabulary and structure. This list poem about a butterfly egg was done by a second grader- she chose a picture to write about, made a list of vocabulary which described the picture, and illustrated the poem. The nice thing about list poems is that there is no need for rhyme or meter, making them accessible to lower level students. Even students with a small core of vocabulary and little knowledge of grammar can create one- at it's very simplest it can be merely a list of adjectives or verbs centered around a theme, such as an object, a picture, an idea, etc.

¡Torta!

I devised this card game, modeled after 'Torta' (a game from Spain) and Slapjack. My fourth graders are working on the constructions 'me gusta', 'me gusta mucho', 'no me gusta' and 'me encanta' with various activities such as skiing, playing basketball, reading, etc- 12 total. I found a bunch of picture depictions for each activity and made enough copies to make about 84 cards (thereby each activity is represented several times).
To play I divided the class into two teams and split the deck in half. (I prearranged the cards so there would be lots of matches). A member from each team comes up and they both turn over a card at the same time, like in Slapjack. If the cards are the same, the first kid to slap the cards and call out 'Torta' is the winner, but not until he or she has made a sentence with the activity and one of the constructions (like 'Me gusta patinar'). That team then gets all the cards that have been turned over. If the cards are not the same, the next two players come up to turn a card, and so on. At the end of class, I tally how many cards each team has and a point goes to the team with the most cards. I keep a running scoreboard so we can track over time how the teams are doing.