Blogin ‘n’ Rolling

Vocabulary Cards: Learning While Having Fun

Posted by Alvaro

Vocabulary cards are an excellent resource to teach and review words. There are many games that we can play with the cards, and they really help students memorizing new vocabulary while having fun. This game is very easy: the students just need to match a picture with a word. It is fast and simple, and what is more important: the students really learn a lot from this game.
You can create your own cards, or you can buy them clicking the Vocabulary Cards buttom at the top of this page. You just need to download the file, print the cards and cut them, and you will be ready to start the game. We also recommend to laminate them, because the students can get too excited, damaging them after a couple of rounds.

The Homer Simpson activity

Posted by Alvaro under: Resources

We’ve been filming different videos lately in Granada and Barcelona, two of the most beautiful Spanish cities. While we work on the activities that will come with those videos, we’d like to present another original strategy that you can easily implement in your foreign language class. The goal of the Homer Simpson activity is to improve the listening comprehension of low-beginner students, and also to review basic vocabulary related to body parts, colors and clothing, in an original and fun way. The activity is extremely easy: the students will try to draw and color the following instructions, which the teacher will read:

1) Tiene la cabeza grande
2) Tiene los ojos grandes
3) Tiene la nariz pequeña
4) Tiene la boca grande
5) Tiene las orejas pequeñas
6) Es calvo, pero tiene poco pelo
7) Es gordo y mediano
8) Tiene una camiseta blanca y pantalones azules
9) Lleva zapatos marrones
10) Tiene los brazos, la cara y las manos amarillos.

Speaking activity: using newspapers in class

Posted by Alvaro under: Resources

This is an activity that you can use in any foreign language classroom, mainly with advanced groups that have some fluency in the target language. We show the students a newspaper headline, but only after we have removed some of its words. Then the students need to tell the class what the missing words are, giving also their opinion about what the article could be about. When they have all spoken, we’ll show them the answer and we’ll talk about the article’s topic.

We would like to try it on-line in the following presentation, we hope you collaborate with us, so please record your suggestions about what the missing words could be and why. In order to leave your comments, you just need to register unless you’re already a Voicethread member. Registration is free, and very easy: you just need to provide an email address and a user name. You can also upload a photo to make it look nicer. Once you’ve registered, click the microphone icon to start recording your ideas ¡Gracias!

Palabras Encadenadas: a fun and quick vocabulary game

Posted by Alvaro under: Resources

We’re trying to upload a video every week until our website is finally ready. Now that the school year is about to finish (at least here, in Spain) we’ve thought that this game called “Las palabras encadenadas” was the best activity we could share with you. It’s a popular game that can also be used in foreign language classrooms. It doesn’t need any preparation, and it’s a great activity to do when the students are tired (after an exam, for example) or in the last minutes of the class.

Alto: Spanish vocabulary activity for all levels

Posted by Alvaro under: Resources

This is one of our favorite activities. We published it some weeks ago in our Classroom 2.0 blog and in Teachertube and we received many positive feedbacks.
It is an easy game that doesn’t need a lot of preparation, and the kids like it!

Playing with numbers

Posted by Alvaro under: Resources

We’re working very hard to get this site ready as soon as possible. In the meantime, we couldn’t resist the idea of having a blog to start sharing some teaching activities and getting feedback from you.
We’ve decided to begin with one of the easiest activities we know: “El Juego del 7”. Although it’s a great activity for the first days of a beginner class, you can also use it in an advanced course, just for the fun of it. It’s a very challenging game, more difficult than what it looks. We encourage you to try it, and please give as your opinion about the outcome. We’re planning to add more teaching games and activities, so sign our mailing list and we’ll keep you update it.

The door is about to open…

Posted by Laura under: News

Our website, and our materials, are finally almost ready. We’ve been filming and creating activities for the last eight months, and now the end (or the beginning) looks closer and closer every day. We’re very excited about this project, and we hope to get as much help as possible from fellow foreign language teachers who share our ideas. The best way to contribute to this project is by contacting us to let us know the kind of materials you miss in your classes. We’re still filming videos, and we would love to hear some ideas about the topics we should focus on. Our goal is that Bablingua becomes a reference website where foreign language teachers can exchange ideas and find useful on-line resources. Please subscribe to our mailing list and we’ll keep you updated about our progress.