Appetizers: "Fotolabras"

I keep working on appetizers as it seems to be a great way of engaging my students at the beginning of the class. 

This time, I come with a combination of some simple ideas, visuals and connections to learn words. Visuals are most of the time the best shortcut when it comes to something we can zip in an image and connections are a very good way of helping our students to make associations and acquire words easier in the long term. Connections are usually based on antonyms, synonyms, cognates, etc. but if you find more, do not hesitate to put them into practice, your students will thank this practice.

Human beings are curious by nature

Aristotle

Lunaprofe 9/25/2018  No comment

Paper 2 / Listening Comprehension / Texto B: Sandra, mi maleta para irme a Francia

First, your students (and might be also possible, that us, teachers are too) might be anxious about listening comprehension because is a new component added to the Ab Initio course, so we have to deal with the uncertainty of being assessed for the first time, not having grade boundaries to rely on, etc.

Because of this, it is important to present these activities in a very comprehensive way to our students, I highly recommend to do pre and post listening activities to help them approach this component and consolidate their learning.

Text A / Up to 2 min Speaker: Sandra Origin: Mexico Audio: 2:04 s
Click here to access the pdf	A possible pre-listening activity: write some questions on the board, such as ¿Quién? ¿Qué? ¿Cuándo? ¿Dónde? ¿Por qué? Give your class a topic and ask them to write as many answers as they can in two minutes

More listening resources:

• The American Association of Teachers of Spanish
• Spanish Listening
• Spanish Resources

Lunaprofe 9/15/2018  2 comments

Paper 2 / Listening Comprehension / Text A: Una tarde con mis amigos

First, your students might (surely) be anxious about listening because a lot of them think they won’t be able to understand anything and that natives speak so fast and with expressions and slang, etc

In order to control that anxiety that may arise I suggest starting off with some simple listening games. We are going to break up activities in pre-listening activities, while-listening activities and post-listening activities.

Listen to Orel from Cuba and answer the questions.

Text A / Up to 1 min Speaker: Orel Origin: Cuba Audio: 25 seconds
Click here to access pdf	Remember that is important to expose your students to different accents and that is really productive to work pre and post listening activities

More listening resources:

• The American Association of Teachers of Spanish
• Spanish Listening
• Spanish Resources

Lunaprofe 9/15/2018  No comment

ab Initio Unit: Cuestiones sociales

This unit is perfect to explore and compare with other cultures controversial topics such as gender role, homeless, stereotypes, public health care or justice.

The suggested topics are:

• Cuestiones de género
• Desempleo
• Desigualdad
• Discriminación
• Drogas
• Estereotipos
• Matrimonio
• Personas sin techo (sin casa)
• Reglas y reglamentos
• Salud pública
• Sistema judicial

Start off reviewing/learning some vocabulary with Quizlet:

Gender equality is more than a goal in itself.
It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.

- Kofi Annan

Lunaprofe 9/02/2018  1 comment