A great quote!

While searching for quotes on language and language learning to decorate my classroom door, I came across this one:

"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart."
- Nelson Mandela

Guia Infantil

This is a really neat website designed for families in Spanish-speaking country, encompassing cultural topics relating to children, recipes, advice for parents, etc. The link below is for the page for tongue twisters; from there it is easy to search for other themes such as poesía, chistes, cuentos y más.

http://www.guiainfantil.com/servicios/trabalenguas.htm

End of the year

Here we are, counting down the days until summer vacation! As the kids get anstier, and my patience wanes, I wind down my theme work and look to activities which review learnt vocabulary. Often this includes games of all kinds. One I particularly like is 'Reloj', a card game from Spain. This works best in smaller classes or groups.
To play:
You will need several decks of cards (I use 5 decks for a class of 12)- remove the queens and the jokers.

To play:
-all cards are dealt evenly to players. Cards are kept face down.
-going clockwise, first player turns over top card, places it in center of table and says ‘reloj’. next player turns over his/her card and says ‘uno’. next player does the same, saying ‘dos’- play continues in this manner counting up to ‘rey’ (12). when players get to ‘rey’, counting starts again at ‘reloj’.
-as cards are played into the middle of the table, should a player turn over a card which holds the same value as the number he/she calls out, player must take all of the cards in the center. (So if player says 'dos' and turns over a 2, player takes all of the cards in the middle) No cards are taken when ‘reloj’ is said since it does not represent a number.
-play continues until one player goes out.

cards are counted in this order:
reloj
uno
dos
tres
cuatro
cinco
seis
siete
ocho
nueve
sota (10)
caballo (jack)
rey (king)

Disfrutalo!

Language Journal

I found this language journal while looking for something else. I have not had the opportunity to fully explore the site, but thought it might be of interest to some.

http://www.languagemagazine.com/internetedition/frame.html

Categorizing by color

When introducing a new thematic set of vocabulary, I plan activities which tap into previously learnt vocab. At my level, this includes numbers, size vocab, and colors. One activity which I particularly like is categorizing by color. This can be done with any set of items and is a great review of color words. Long ago I made a 'color mat'- a big poster with a space for each color on it (labeled, of course).
My First Graders have just started the theme 'Ranitas'. Using a collection of small frogs and the color mat, I held up each frog and asked "What color is this frog?". I call on a student to answer- this student then gets to place the frog on the appropriate color. I have gathered over the years enough frogs for everyone to have a turn, with multiple frogs of some colors and some colors having no frogs at all. Once all of the frogs are placed on the color mat, then I ask "How many frogs are red? (blue, yellow, etc)" Colors and numbers have now been practiced with a novel item (frogs) which keeps the interest and motivation high.
Tip: since many items are more than one color (a frog could be both yellow and black), I instruct the class to identify the color that it is the most of. This makes it easier to place the item on the color mat.

One of those 'A-ha!' moments

Over the years I have been stymied by the learning process of some of my students- two of my current students have provided me with an epiphany...now I am working out how to address the issue.
What I have noticed
Like any other teacher, I have a wide mix of abilities in my classes- all kids come to Spanish, regardless of whether they are learning disabled, autistic, have speech impediments, etc. Making these kids feel successful is extremely important to me yet it is a continual challenge, particularly as they go through the grades to find those successes. As I mentioned above, two of my current students have provided some insight. Both of these girls are learning disabled...both of them have a great accent in Spanish and both are able to easily and creatively use a wide variety of phrases such as please, thank you, you're welcome, bless you, "how do you say ___ in spanish?", hello, goodbye, etc, yet when faced with a question like "How are you?" or "What color is the ___?" they struggle to come up with an answer. One moment it seems like they are extending and another moment they have great difficulties accessing class. This has puzzled me to no end. I know they both have memory retrieval issues and have challenges recalling information, yet they were using lots of phrases and words appropriately. What was the mystery I was missing?
What I suspect
I believe the solution is in fact simple- situations where only one possibility exists are learnt and recalled better than situations which are open ended and have multiple possibilities. In other words, there is only one word to express "please", but there are many answers to the question "How are you?" (my students have a choice between 12 possibilities by the end of 2nd grade). I suspect these girls' brains are able to pull up and use the vocabulary that falls into the first category- 1 word/phrase for a situation- but can not sift through a set of multiple possibilities in order to choose a specific word/phrase to use. Perhaps their brains are unable to store this information in a manner which allows them to access it later, or the process breaks down before it even gets to the part of the brain where this information is housed, or they can not pick out from what is stored the particular word/phrase they want to use. Certainly amount of usage of vocabulary plays a part- however, we use expressions of courtesy and the question 'how are you' every class, so they are used in equal parts.
Going forward
The challenge for me now is to figure out how I can present vocab for these types of kids (because I have many like this, not just these two girls) in a way which mimics the '1 word/phrase for a situation' phenomonen while at the same time integrating it into a 'multiple possibilities' framework. I shall ponder this further....

A clever mistake

Today in one of my first grade classes we were reviewing the names of some farm animals that we had learnt in kindergarten. We came to 'sheep' and in the picture I was showing was also a lamb. One of my students said, "Well, that must be lambo, which would be a boy, and if it was a girl it would be lamba." I asked him to explain his statement, whereupon he said 'O's are for boys and 'a's are for girls....my students have lots of experience with gender endings, starting with 'niño' and 'niña' in kindergarten. Though the o's and a's won't forever suffice (wait for mapa and mano and problema and so on!) the concept is well accepted with my students and as in this case, is well understood, even if the words he made up are incorrect. So smart!