Spanish Back to School Activities & Lessons
It’s almost here, la aperatura de las clases, or the opening of school! New or recycled school supplies, or unos materiales escolares, are on eveybody’s mind.
Hispanic Country Cultural Note
Spanish speaking countries have big-box stores that sell school supplies, but there still remains the small office supply or school supply store, la papelería. Many people head there to get the following:
- unos lápices= some pencils
- unos bolígrafos= some pens
- un bloc de papel= a packet of paper
- unas carpetas= some binders
- unos cuadernos= some workbooks
- unas gomas= some erasers
- unos marcadores= some markers
Check out the best in Spanish Back to School materials. Use this coupon code FB10 for 15% off any time!
The Spanish present perfect- or what just happened
What has just happened to you? You need to know how to say this in Spanish. The grammatical term for this is the PRESENT PERFECT. Here are some pointers:
Use the correct helping verb + the past participle = has or have done something.
More Spanish Materials & Activities
Semana Santa- Spanish Holy or Easter week
Holy Week, or Semana Santa, is one of the most important historical, cultural, and spiritual holidays in the Hispanic world. Parades fill the streets with ornate, buy sombre pageantry.
Floats or los Tronos
Los Tronos are the ornate, historic floats used in Spanish especially for the Holy Week parades. In some cities some of the statues are hundreds of years old, or they are reproductions of the statues of Christ, Mary, the Disciples, and more biblical figures used in Spanish in the 1600′s. Watch the video and read the article in Spanish.
Spanish Past Tense Practice- Preterite Verbs
We can always use a little practice with past tense Spanish verb phrases, and the preterite is on today.
Remember, you use the preterite for actions in the past that:
- Have begun and ended in a finite way; completed actions.
- Clues: ayer-yesterday, anoche-last night, por . . . minutos/horas/meses. Time markers that frame the past action.
See this preterite practice using the context of going to the movies. Spanis Preterite Verbs Practice or Assessment
Click HERE for more Spanish language learning materials.
Using the Spanish Conditional- or el potencial simple
Practice the Spanish conditional mode or the I COULD way of expressing actions as in: I could eat the whole enchilada. Comería la enchilada completa. A couple of pointers:
- The infinitive stays intact, or as is, for REGULAR VERBS
- Irregular verbs do have a stem change; they’re irregular.
Check out this simple, basic explanation: The Conditional Mode
Practice some Conversational Questions
- ¿Comerías una pizza entera?
- ¿Irías a un parque en el tiempo bonito?
- ¿Si tuvieras much tiempo libre en el fin de semana, que harías?
- ¿Qué películas verias si tuvieras el chance de ver tres en sequida?
And, here’s some practice or an assessment for using the conditional and double object pronouns in the context or situation of air travel. Spanish Conditional: Air Travel
April Fool’s Day in Spanish
Here comes April Fool’s Day, but it is not celebrated on April 1 in the Spanish speaking world. Nowhere close, it is celebrated on December 28 as El Día de los Inocentes.
It commemorates King Herod’s slaughter of all male infants in biblical times. El Día de los Inocentes is now all about pranks and practical jokes, especially in Spain and Mexico where there are media hoaxes.
Here are some free activities: Spanish April Fool’s Day Activities
For a El Día de los Inocentes reading and activities click HERE.
Spanish Travel and Airplane Activities
Learning how to communicate on a flight is vital. Spanish learners who have some conversational basics are ready to learn airplane and air travel vocabulary and basic phrases. As always, develop assessments at the very beginning of planning a unit so that you teach exactly what students will e assessed on. Here is a big assessment, making a video about a flight, and a small vocabulary and verb review.
Enter in your own point values for the Video Skit, or come up with values as a class.
Spanish Video Skit on A Flight
Spanish Flight Activity or Assessment
Mexico Internet Research Project
Mexico Research on the Internet
Sometimes just diving in to Spanish and sifting through it teaches you best. Reading in Spanish on the Spanish language Internet is a vital skill, and like anything else, the more you do it the better you get at it.
Print out this handout on Mexico. Mexico Internet Research Points. You then need to change the language preferences on Google to include español. Search for each topic and write down what you have found in SPANISH.
Now, here is a quiz or basic assessmentÑ Mexico Internet Research Questions . Students formulated their own Spanish questions based on the Research Project. Formulating and asking QUESTIONS is a vital skill.
Instant Handouts, Power Points, Materials!
Need Spanish materials immediately? Buy a Key to the House membership at foreignlanguagehouse.com. You can browse, choose, and instantly download any digital document or power point on the site. Straight to your own hard-drive, and you have it forever!
You can always re-download them if you need them again too.
Spanish Oscar Activities
It’s Academy Award time! Spanish students, especially the tween and teen set, love talking about the Oscars. Be ready for Los Premios Oscar 2011 with These Activities. Students also have practice using the superlative, mejor, or the best.
Spanish Oscar Vocabulary
- la película – the film
- el actor- the actor
- la actriz – the actress
- el director- the director
- la película documental- the documentary
- la película animada – the animated film
-
Receive monthly tips and activities for teaching languages, plus a FREE downloadable French and Spanish worksheet in each issue. Sign up now!(Required fields are bold)
