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May: A sample of the activities from our latest icebreaker about stem-changing verbs: "¿Quieres un perro?".
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Posted by Alvaro under: News
We’re getting ready for our sixth school year with Bablingua and we’d like more teachers to have access to all of our online resources. We’re offering schools and counties a special account for their Spanish teachers: unlimited access to all the icebreakers, cultural corner videos, smart lesson plans, vocabulary cards, games and ebooks published in this website at a low price, a one-time payment of $450 per school (check our how to order section for more details.)
If your school or county is interested in this offer, just contact us. We’ll create an account for each school with access to the whole site. Please notice that even if a school doesn’t renew its subscription (the renewal fee for 2013/14 is $20 per school), all its Spanish teachers will have access to our current content for an unlimited period of time.
We encourage school districts, teachers and schools to email us to open their doors to the Hispanic world.
We publish new materials every month so you have a wide variety of up-to-date videos to choose from. These are our resources so far (contact us if you’d like to receive a copy):
- 38 Icebreakers for different levels, which cover the most important grammar and vocabulary topics. We’re currently working in adding optional Spanish subtitles to all of them, check our progress here.
- 10 videos and activities from our Cultural Corner so your students are exposed to the different Hispanic accents and cultures
- 4 Smart Lesson Plans with all you need to offer a different class based on new technologies and active involvement from your students.
- 4 sets of Vocabulary Cards that will help your students remember and practice vocabulary previously taught.
- 2 ebooks: “Hablan2”, designed to encourage speaking from the first day and “Escucha: hay un ladrón en mi clase”, to boost your student’s listening and reading skills.
- 2 Games easy to use in your classes.
- A 4-episode story and a documentary about the flea market of “El Rastro”. De Compras en el Rastro is our longest production so far, and it includes a Teacher and a Student’s booklet that will help your students to get the most of the videos.
Contact us or download this application form (clicking the ↓ arrow) if you’d like to open a school account:
STEM-CHANGING VERBS E->IE, O->UE
Posted by Alvaro
Including the most common stem-changing verbs in a short video is a real challenge, and we’re very proud of the result of our “¿Quieres un perro?” icebreaker. It contains examples of how to use 14 e->ie and o->ue verbs in a meaningful story that also has a powerful message about the responsibility of taking care of a dog. Those 14 verbs are:
- e->ie: cerrar, comenzar, empezar, entender, mentir, pensar, preferir, querer.
- o->ue: devolver, dormir, encontrar, morder, morir, soñar.
In addition to those verbs, the activities of the “¿Quieres un perro?” package also have examples with other verbs such as poder or recomendar, and useful vocabulary about dogs and animals with key words such as abandonar, adoptar, cachorro, ladrar, morder or protectora de animales.
The PDF document and the audio file included in the package will prepare your beginner students to understand this interesting video about dogs, and the video also features optional subtitles in Spanish to make it easier for them.
We’re sure your students will enjoy the visit to “El Arca de Santi” animal shelter, and they will get a lot of practice with stem-changing verbs.
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A different cooking video to celebrate 5 de mayo
Posted by Alvaro
Food is a very important part of every culture, and something students usually love. That’s why one of our first icebreakers was about how to cook Spanish omelette: “La tortilla de España”, based on one of our most successful lessons when we were teaching Spanish in the U.S., shows how to cook this famous Spanish dish, that you can prepare with your students as long as you have some cooking facilities at your school.
For those teachers who can’t cook at school or who haven’t got enough time we created the program “Cocina fácil”. In the first episode, we explained how to make gazpacho, another famous Spanish dish that doesn’t require a proper kitchen and that can be made in just 20 minutes.
Following its success, we’ve decided to film a second episode of Cocina fácil, this time about guacamole. We wanted to make something different this time, and “Cocina fácil: el guacamole” is definitely not the standard cooking program. It tells the story of Vicente Herrera, “el tiburón” (the shark), a young man with an endless appetite who calls his friend Julieta hoping to eat something at her place. However, Julieta -a young Mexican girl with an excellent reputation as a chef- is not at home, has no money and only has a few minutes before “el tiburón” arrives. Does it sound familiar? We’ve tried to set a scene similar to the one many teachers face at school: lack of time, money and resources. So… what’s the solution? As Julieta says, it’s simple: guacamole.
The result is a 7-minute video that features optional Spanish subtitles and that you can preview in low resolution in the icebreaker section. As usual, the package also includes a PDF document with activities to do before, during and after watching the video, the transcript of the audio activities and video, and the answer key.
As far as the grammar, “Cocina fácil: el guacamole” covers the formal commands (usted / ustedes) and how to use them with an object pronoun (lo, los, la, las). The vocabulary focuses on recipes, with key verbs such as “añadir”, “aplastar”, “cortar”, “lavar” and “pelar”, and other words related to cooking such as “aguacate”, “cebolla”, “cilantro”, “cuchillo”, “limón”, “maíz”, “tenedor”, “tomate”, “tostadas” and “sal”.
We look forward to receiving your comments about this icebreaker, telling us how the class went. Remember, there is no excuse: you just need a bowl, a fork, a knife and some cheap easy-to-find ingredients to give a Mexican taste to your class. It’s “cocina fácil” after all.
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Body parts and the preposition “de” to indicate possession
Posted by Alvaro
“Gente perfecta” has everything you need to explain or review body parts and the use of the preposition “de” to indicate possession from a different –and fun- point of view. The 6-minute video and the activities of the PDF document will give your students several examples of how to combine this vocabulary and grammar structure to build their own projects.
In the video, which clearly uses a humoristic approach, several people describe their idea of a perfect woman, using sentences such as “La mujer perfecta tiene el cuerpo de Sofía Vergara”. The young Spanish journalist who interviews them also gives her description of her ideal man (i.e. “El hombre perfecto tiene la nariz del actor portorriqueño Carlos Ponce”).
Once your students see these examples -and the one included in the PDF document with the activities, about the perfect superhero (“El superhéroe perfecto tiene las manos de Spiderman”)- they’ll be able to present their own projects about the topic of their choice. This is our example: “the perfect basketball player”:
Depending on the fluency of your students, they could give more information about the people they’ve chosen. We could say, for instance, that the perfect basketball player has Wilt Chamberlain’s arms because they’re long and very strong (“El jugador de baloncesto perfecto tiene los brazos de Wilt Chamberlain porque son largos y muy fuertes”).
We insisted everybody who participated in the video to speak clearly and slowly, and we’ve also added optional Spanish subtitles to guarantee that you have an original and successful class with your Spanish I / A1 / beginner students when covering these topics.
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