¡Feliz cumpleaños Pepita!

Yes, we celebrate Pepita's (our puppet friend) birthday! It's an authentic, real reason to use birthday greetings and vocabulary while at the same time having fun and using our imagination. One of the activities we do is make birthday cards for her. We brainstorm possibilities for greetings, messages, and leavetakings that can be used in the cards prior to starting on the cards themselves. The key for me is to get the students to use vocabulary they know (we do a lot of activities with greetings, leavetakings, etc as well as common expressions for writing letters and notecards). Here are some examples from my second grade classes:

This little girl added a speech bubble saying 'gracias' for the mouse who is receiving the gift. Love the good manners and creativity! (I do correct spelling but hadn't gotten to this one prior to taking the picture).
This is the inside of a card. The message is simple, basic, and yet effective and meaningful!

I use word banks for my second graders when they are doing writing activities. Each child gets a word bank to work with. As students become accustomed to using word banks they develop dictionary skills and the ability to access resources at their disposal, instead of constantly relying on me. As well, it ensures good spelling habits and reinforces literacy skills.

We are always trying to bring the real world into our foreign language classroom- writing cards and having celebrations are great ways to do so!