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The taste of Spain: how to teach food in a more exciting way.

Posted by Alvaro under: News

You can now watch the video of our new icebreaker, “La Tortilla de España” in the Icebreaker section of our site. If you’re also interested in receiving a free sample of the activities included in the “La Tortilla de España” package, just join our mailing list. “La Tortilla de España” is more a lesson plan than an icebreaker.

It is based on an activity that we did during our stay in the US. We asked permission from the food and nutrition staff of our schools to use their class for one period, and then we took our students there to cook Spanish omelet together. If you don’t have this possibility, you can still use the video and the activities in class, and ask the students to try it at home.
The icebreaker includes 4 audio tracks and a 14-page PDF booklet that will help your students to understand the video. We have paid special attention to the regional differences among Spanish speaking countries, and we have decided to cover only the formal imperative (usetd and ustedes). There PDF booklet is divided in three parts:
“La bolsa de la compra”, in which we cover the basic food vocabulary, emphasizing the differences between the Spanish spoken in Spain (gamba, cacahuete, patata) and the most common words used in the Central and South American Spanish speaking countries (camarón, maní, papa).
“La dieta mediterránea”, the second part, focuses on the kind of diet that most Spaniards follow. There is also a grammatical section to review the adverbs of frequency.
The last part, “¡A cocinar!” will help the students to understand the video. There are also many activities to practice cooking expressions (calentar, pelar, cortar, etc) and formal commands.

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Teaching body parts in a different way

Posted by Laura under: Resources

We learned the “monster” activity in a workshop a couple of years ago, and we’ve been using it since then every time we have to explain “Las partes del cuerpo” or “body parts”. In this activity, the students have to draw a monster, using numbers that they picked at random at the beginning of the class, before we told them what we were going to do that day. Some of the monsters will have two, three or even six heads, and the same happens to the rest of the body parts we cover during the class. In addition to that, they’ll have to write a description of their monster, such as “Mi monstruo tiene una cabeza, cinco ojos, tres narices, cuatro bocas, dos orejas, seis cuerpos, dos brazos, dos manos, una pierna y tres pies”. It’s a great activity not only to learn or review body parts, but also to point out if they are masculine or feminine, and how to do the plural form of those words.

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A quick game using vocabulary cards

Posted by Alvaro under: Resources

Most people need to see or hear new vocabulary at least six times before they can remember it. This is a fact that makes our jobs as foreign language teachers especially challenging: how can we review so much without making our classes too repetitive and boring? Fortunately, there are different strategies we can use to review vocabulary, and the combination of them is what can help us to keep the interest and attention of our students. One of our favorite methods to work with words is through vocabulary cards. In this video we’d like to present a quick but very effective game to review a large number of words in a fun way. We have also added a set number 2. The new set covers different topics, including shopping, holiday, sports and leisure.

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Vocabulary Cards: Learning While Having Fun

Posted by Alvaro under: Resources

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 by clicking the Vocabulary Cards button 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 that you laminate them, because the students can get too excited, damaging them after a couple of rounds.

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